‘That’s Officer Lobo to you, Pardner’

Even to seasoned equine rescuer Amber Santos, Lobo the horse was a haunting sight.

“He was a walking skeleton, probably 300 pounds underweight,” Santos said, describing the first time she saw him. Trapped knee-deep in manure in a Livermore boarding facility, his halter embedded in his nose and his tongue nearly split in half from wire bits, he winced at the slightest touch.

But, in a story whose triumph and poignancy rivals that of Black Beauty, the former rescue horse is now a rising star in the Oakdale Police Department.

Lobo, who was adopted by Oakdale Officer Joe Cruz about a year ago, has shown a talent for policing. Most recently, the two helped patrol the Livermore Rodeo together.

“He’s a better horse than I’m a rider,” says Cruz, who found Lobo at Santos’ Livermore-based rescue facility about six months after Santos recovered him from a neighboring property.

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