March 19, 2024

Atwoods trying to win barn, help animals

As a little girl, Sharon Atwood got her first experiences with helping animals by bottle feeding baby rabbits. This was an interest of hers that her mother not only encouraged but participated in as well.

For Sharon, 65, this wasn’t just something she did as kid for fun and later outgrew, it became a full-time passion.  In fact, when she got married, her husband, Steve, had no choice but to pitch in on her quest to help animals in need.

No matter where the couple has lived during their marriage, they’ve been raising and rehabilitating animals. For the last 20 plus years, their current home, which is located between Newton and Baxter, has served as an animal rehabilitation center. However, the Atwoods’ experienced a major setback last October.

“We lost our barn. This is what the barn looked like before the fire,” Sharon said, showing a photo of the barn in better times.

“My husband hand painted the whole barn,” she added, while continuing to admire the photo of her still intact barn.

Sharon said investigators still haven’t determined the cause of the blaze, which completely destroyed the more than 100-year-old barn, damaged their hay barn, melted part of the aluminum siding on their house and forced them to have 45 fire damaged trees removed.

Luckily, the barn was empty at the time of the fire and no animals were harmed that they know of.

The Atwood home seems to be similar to “Dr. Dolittle’s,” literatures most famous animal lover and veterinarian, home in that they have taken in all types of animals. Sharon said they’ve had horses, farm animals, peacocks, cats, dogs and even iguanas at their home at some point or another and they do it voluntarily.

“We’d take in deer, owls, hawks, coyotes, fox, raccoons, possums, squirrels, baby rabbits, sparrows, crows — just about everything,” Sharon said.

As they’ve gotten older, Sharon said she and Steve don’t care for as many types of animals as they did in the past, but they won’t willingly stop helping them all together.

“Getting older, it’s kind of nice not having to work so hard at it,” Sharon said, although they still have a number of animals on their property.

Losing the barn hurt a lot Sharon said, and she talked about how wonderful it was to have the barn’s space available to utilize. Since the fire, nothing remains of the old barn but its former foundation, which is covered in soot.

“When you pull into the driveway, it was the first thing you’d see. It’s the center part of our property. It just looks so empty now,” Sharon said.

As luck would have it, one month after the fire, Steve was looking in an issue of Horse and Rider Magazine and he found out about a contest to win a new barn that was being sponsored by Nutrena. Sharon entered the contest, and out of thousands of entries, she was selected as semi-finalist by the judges.

Sharon is now one of four finalists competing in this portion of the competition, which is based on votes from the general public.

You can vote for Sharon by clicking or typing in the following link: http://barnlifesweeps.com/voting

Sharon said the website works on phones and tablets for voting as well, but you can only vote once per day, per device.

The Atwoods’ have a strong support system and their family and friends have been asking people to vote for her on social media sites and she has even put up a few flyers around Newton asking for support.

“I have put in many hours and years of my life doing what I love,” Sharon wrote on her flyer. “I hope you can support my love for these animals by voting for me.”

Voting will end on Friday and Sharon is currently in second place. She is competing against people from Georgia, Tennessee and Michigan in the finals.