Impacts of the Los Angeles wildfires could have a long-lasting effect here, as many displaced people will likely search for new homes in Arizona.

But what about the animals? Where will they go? A local therapy farm is offering its barns, its volunteers and its love and say they get more than enough in return.

Their names are Patrick, Presley and Phantom.

“The horses from the kill pen, you know it’s like they have a frown in their eyes, they’re scared, they’re terrified.”

Laura Heard is a retired therapist who now volunteers her time to be with horses. She said the three were rescued from a slaughter house in Texas, rehabilitated at Pierce College in Los Angeles and most recently given a new home at Scottsdale’s Hunkapi Farms.

“And you just go up and love ‘em and they just came up to us and they just put their head up against ours and we put on our hands on ‘em and we talk to them,” Heard said.

“It’s like everything is gonna be okay. You’re in a great place. We’re gonna fix your wounds, we’re gonna fix your heart.”

Heard and fellow volunteer Victor McBride recently returned from the devastation with the three new horses in tow.

“We saw the smoke driving in, there was certainly a mist over the entire city and we knew that it was a very serious situation.”

McBride is a former firefighter who now has a construction company and volunteers his spare time at the facility.

“I just want to spend a few minutes just to feed the horses, to hang out with them and love on them, to hug them. And that makes everything so peaceful at the end of a long workday,” McBride said.

Hunkapi is a 10-acre farm specializing in animal rescue and sometimes human rescue. It’s been owned and run by Terra Schaad since 1995.

“The mission is to teach the world to fear less and love more. And we do that in a lot of different ways, but primarily we’re an equine therapy program,” Schaad said.

“We rescue animals that are utilized in that program and then we do a myriad of other events on the farm to help connect people from their heads to their toes.”

For Schaad, watching the LA fires burn was a call to action to do something for the horses. They drove out initially to donate feed to a horse shelter there.

“I know there’s a lot going out to the people, we certainly – our hearts are with them. But we are, we utilize animals in our program and so I knew our hearts had to go to help the horses.” Schaad said. “Dogs get a lot of attention, horses don’t get a lot of attention.”

Schaad, who has more than 30 horses already on her farm, wants to go back to Southern California to get more.

“They’re living in pens. They’ve got red strings around their necks with numbers. And so they’re still looking for, and trying to find and locate and get their horses back to their homes. They're still an additional 40 to 70 there.”

Heard and McBride say as much as it helps the horses, it helps their new caretakers just as much.

“It’s so fulfilling for us to be able to provide them a second chance at life, a second career. Even if it’s just being a pasture horse, they deserve that,” Heard said.

“I went through a program called ‘Save a Warrior’ years ago and the core of that was equine therapy. And that really helped just alleviate any kind of tension from firefighting.”

McBride believes taking care of horses is also taking care of him.

“It allowed me to reconnect with the world around me. And forget, hey, that this just isn’t about working everyday, it’s about living everyday. And I think the stress aspect just completely lifts up and it’s gone.”