Buckeye Valley’s Fields helps rescue others

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Buck­eye Val­ley High School’s Abbey Fields

Abbey Fields affin­ity for ani­mals began at a very young age. It was when she was in ele­men­tary school that she began com­ing home with snakes in her pock­ets — which her mother would later find in the washer.

Her mother was also known to have to deal with an occa­sional toad in the house, also cour­tesy of Abbey.

It was after the fam­ily moved to Buck­eye Val­ley from the city of Delaware that Abbey began to have larger ani­mals. Today she has two pot belly pigs, eight hens, three roost­ers, three dogs, two cats and a frog, which Abbey said doesn’t really count as she has only had the tiny tree frog for a month now.

The two pot belly pigs were both res­cues, one from a breed­ing farm and the other res­cued just min­utes before it was to be put down.

Nemo, named for a deformed hoof sim­i­lar to Nemo of ani­mated movie fame’s deformed fin, is the younger pig that is around 2 years old; the other one is six to eight years.

The pigs are smarter than dogs, Abbey said, not­ing Nemo can sit and do tricks. With her inter­est in ani­mals, it is no sur­prise that 4-H has been a large part of Abbey’s life. She has shown projects annu­ally at the fair and worked both as a mem­ber of the junior fair board and as a camp counselor.

She showed rab­bits her entire life except for the last three years. This year she showed chick­ens and last year one of the pot belly pigs.

“I will really miss it. It was, and still is, a big part of my life,” she said of the youth program.

Her love of ani­mals has trans­lated into her goal of doing ani­mal assis­tance ther­apy at her own farm. She plans to become a spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher and is cur­rently look­ing at East­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­sity, Bowl­ing Green State Uni­ver­sity and Union Uni­ver­sity in Kentucky.

Besides her expe­ri­ence with ani­mals, Abbey has also worked as a camp coun­selor at Recre­ation Unlim­ited, work­ing with kids in crafts, swim­ming, bas­ket­ball and teach­ing skills.

Heather Halsey is Abbey’s soc­cer coach and has known her for three years.

“I have watched her grow into a remark­able young woman,” Halsey said. The coach said Abbey led the team in a pos­i­tive way and always “had this pres­ence about her­self that made her stand out; she knew if a sit­u­a­tion needed sen­si­tiv­ity or humor and she broke the ice. She is always will­ing to lis­ten to her team­mates when they needed some­one and she was the one who always made sure that every­one was hav­ing fun.”

Halsey said Abbey has a way of mak­ing every­one feel bet­ter about them­selves, such as when Abbey helped some­one else who was being bullied.

“I got to watch this whole process hap­pen,” Halsey said. “I saw the many sides of Abbey and real­ized that there were so many remark­able things about her … that she was some­one that peo­ple should strive to emu­late. She is all about kind­ness, accep­tance, friend­ship and pos­i­tiv­ity. I wish that I could meet more teenagers that under­stood how impor­tant it is to accept one another and be kind to each other. I admire that she strives to spread that word to every­one around her. I feel like even though she is a teenager and I am an adult, I have learned so much from her actions and the way that she treats people.”

Abbey began the TGIF (Thank Good­ness I am Female) pro­gram in the com­mu­nity after attend­ing an inter­na­tional youth con­fer­ence. TGIF is for sixth grade girls and teaches them how to deal with aggres­sion and to form pos­i­tive relationships.

“I was bul­lied and sex­u­ally harassed in the third grade,” Abbey said of her rea­sons for begin­ning the pro­gram. Since the program’s incep­tion, she has helped to add GAL (Girl Action League) for sev­enth grade girls. Abbey works with the pro­grams dur­ing her lunch peri­ods and has also spo­ken at other func­tions as well, includ­ing at a memo­r­ial ser­vice for a Delaware teen who was bul­lied and com­mit­ted suicide.

Diane Williams, an inter­ven­tion spe­cial­ist at the high school, said Abbey “is a very ener­getic and pos­i­tive indi­vid­ual, who treats every­one with friend­li­ness and tol­er­ance. She has an open heart to stu­dents who strug­gle or are chal­lenged in var­i­ous ways. She is com­pas­sion­ate in her expe­ri­ence work­ing with dis­abled chil­dren. She has demon­strated sound lead­er­ship in the devel­op­ment of her anti-bullying pro­gram for young girls at the mid­dle school, and now in the ele­men­tary grades.”

Besides her other activ­i­ties, Abbey is also in march­ing and pep bands and has played travel soc­cer since she was 4. Sev­eral col­leges are cur­rently look­ing to recruit her to play the sport for them.

Tak­ing numer­ous courses, includ­ing senior Eng­lish, gov­ern­ment, col­lege prep classes and FFA com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Abbey said there is much to look for­ward to dur­ing her last year of high school.

But at the same time, there is a sense of impend­ing change on the hori­zon, she said.

“It’s scary. My best friend and I are going in sep­a­rate direc­tions,’ she said, adding that the last night on the field for band will be sad because “that’s where I made my best friends.”

Abbey’s advice to under­class­men is, “Just be your­self, make the best of it.”

Abbey is the daugh­ter of David and Beckie Fields of Radnor.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Oct 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.