By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
PEMBERVILLE—Karen Burris hasn’t strayed far from her roots. At three years old, she brought home all kinds of animals from stray cats to injured baby bunnies in the backyard.
Her parents always said she couldn’t keep the animals, but once they saw how much she loved the little creatures, they let the animals stay–with one caveat–she had to take care of them herself. And she did, whether it was cats or dogs that got dropped off, rabbits that weren’t wanted or a parakeet or hamster that needed a home.
Today, she has taken those childhood lessons to heart. She still surrounds herself with animals that others don’t want or can no longer care for and provides them with food, a safe place and plenty of love.
“There is just something special about the pureness of their hearts,” Burris said, explaining why she cares so much for the animals. “They are so innocent and can’t speak for themselves, so somebody has to.”
Her operation has gotten a lot bigger. In fact, at last count, she had nearly 60 animals: 25 cats (10 inside and 10-15 outside), eight pigs, seven goats, six roosters, three bunnies, two ducks that help one old goose, two turtles and one sheep. It is no longer just a hobby, it is a labor of love that she calls Furever Sunny Animal Sanctuary.
The sanctuary is named for Sunny, her beloved first horse. Burris became enamored with horses in middle school. When she was 16 years old, she bought Sunny using hard-earned money that was supposed to be used to buy her first car.
“My parents were furious, yet they were very supportive and drove me to go pick up the horse,” she recalled. “It just meant I had to save up another whole year to buy a car.”
In between taking care of Sunny, which was boarded at a farm, and the other stray animals she cared for at the family home, Burris continued to babysit and work at Frobose Meat Locker. “All my money went to gas and animals,” she said.
She and Sunny were a bonded pair. “I loved him so much,” she reminisced.
He was trained to show and showed previously, but she swears he didn’t like it. “I was more into the care of my animal than in showing, so if he didn’t want to show, we didn’t show.”
The only contest she ever won with him as a member of the Eastwood equestrian team was second place in a state contest called “Groom and Clean.” The horses are muddied up and the owners clean them. “For that, he was like, ‘Sure, I’ll stand for that,’” she said.
She became known as the girl who would take in any animal. “I even took in a friend’s goat from the county fair because she didn’t want it to go to slaughter,” Burris said.
Because she was so devoted to the animals, she lived at home throughout college for both her bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in geology. She cared for the animals, juggled studying, and continued working to cover the costs of raising the animals.
Her dream was to teach, use the money she had to continue to care for the animals, and then start an animal sanctuary when she retired.
The universe had a different plan. “People kept dropping off animals, including her first pig, a ‘teacup pig’ that wasn’t a teacup pig; it had outgrown the family’s house,” she said. All eight of the pigs she has at the farm come from families that thought they were getting a small pet pig.
She also has six roosters and no hens because city families who get chicks to raise in the city limits find out that some of those chicks are roosters, which aren’t allowed in city limits. With roosters, she can’t have hens because the roosters get defensive and fight among themselves.
“I’m a single teacher on my own small farm. If I’m going to continue to have people dropping off animals, I need some funding and eventually a larger farm,” Burris said.
In 2018, she created a @fureversunny Facebook page and fureversunny_ Instagram account to start to get the word out. And in 2021, her animal sanctuary became an official 502 (c) 3 nonprofit organization.
“It was a dream that I knew would eventually happen, so why not start now,” she decided.
In 2022, just months after she lost Sunny, Burris and her menagerie of animals moved from the small farm to the current 12 ½-acre farmstead at 5900 N River Road just off U.S. 6 and Ohio 199.
Heartbroken after losing Sunny, just shy of his 27th birthday, Burris chose to honor him by renaming the sanctuary after him. And “Furever Sunny” was reborn, she said.
All of the animals at the sanctuary are either surrendered or rescued. Because the animals can live for 10 years or more, she does ask for a fee when animals are surrendered to help with costs for feed, housing and care.
Often people give up the animals because they can no longer support them, so Burris will ask if they have food on hand or other items they could provide instead of a fee.
She spends two to three hours each morning tending to the animals, and “always dreaming all these new schemes to get myself in trouble.” She saw a free chicken coop on Facebook that would be perfect for her “old man” goose and two duck pals.
She asked her cousin who has a tow truck to deliver it to her farm. “The coop needs to be fixed up, so I create new projects for myself that require that I spend the whole weekend on upgrading the farm, fixing things and making new enclosures,” she said.
Burris relies on the help of her parents, Bonnie and Rodney Burris, other family members, friends, volunteers and strangers who believe in her purpose. Her day job as a teacher at Bittersweet Farm funds the sanctuary, from feed to fences and building upgrades to bills for veterinary care.
The feed bill alone covers 600-700 bales of hay for the three horses, 60 bags of various feed each month, and untold quantities of food scraps that get dropped off.
Money is the biggest challenge. “Pretty much my entire teacher salary goes to the farm. I would love to have this be my full-time job. I can’t do that yet,” she said.
When she’s not teaching or doing chores to care for the animals, Burris thinks up fundraising ideas. One weekend she might host an art fair, complete with food trucks, artist booths and animals. Another time, visitors are invited to practice yoga with the curious and overly friendly goats. A week ago, Copper Moon Studio in Holland, Ohio, hosted a craft day with goats as a fundraiser for Furever Sunny.
Currently, she has T-shirts for sale and plans for a Taylor Swift Listening Party in September.
The sanctuary website and the social media pages each have opportunities to engage with and support Furever Sunny.
With goats in her face, cats roaming the farm, pigs running toward her like puppy dogs, and roosters crowing nearly constantly, Burris is contented and happy with the life she has created for herself and the animals.
