Wildfires crippled her animal care business but she's trying to hang on. 'These animals depend on me.'
The past couple of weeks have been harrowing for California resident, Thea Creasy, a devoted animal advocate and caretaker.
As she personally tries to come to terms with the enormity of the destruction caused by the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, she can’t dwell too much on her own loss because so many other lives depend on her to stay strong.
“January was quite the month for me,” said Creasy, who runs both a pet care business and a non-profit animal sanctuary that houses horses, goats, pigs, chickens, a donkey, guinea pigs, and a few foster dogs. Many of the animals are rescues in deep need of rehabilitation and love.
What Creasy desperately craves is to catch a break. But the hits keep coming.
“My business is down 75%. Two of my staff lost their homes to the fires and I’m struggling to get financial support for my own losses,” she said, in an interview with Bagable.com.
“I’ve got my head down just trying to survive. I don’t have a choice because of all these animals that depend on me,” she said.
When Bagable.com first spoke with Creasy in mid-January, she was reeling from the immediate impact of the raging wildfires across LA County, which had forced more than 180,000 people from their homes and burned entire neighborhoods to the ground.
“I basically lost two-thirds of income by then and half my staff,” she said. Of her two small businesses, the wildfires first crippled her “Paws on a Path” dog walking and boarding services that had about 25 clients in the LA neighborhoods of Malibu, Topanga and Woodland Hills.
“I couldn’t access Topanga and East Malibu because of the fires and my clients all evacuated,” she said. “Our services are mobile. We do our dog hiking, dog walking, pet visits, training and care throughout the area. So as of January 8, our services were obliterated.”
As she thought ahead, she feared that many of her pet sitting clients wouldn’t even be able to return quickly to their homes because the fires had widely destroyed access roads.
About an hour and a half north of LA, in Lake Hughes, Creasy also run Wild Horizon Farm. It’s a 20-acre wildlife and animal sanctuary she opened in 2021. It’s her second business, where she also offers horseback riding lessons and boarding for horses and dogs.



“I have 40 animals in total at the ranch, so we have to be on standby to evacuate at all times in case of fires,” she said.
In late January, the inevitable happened. Creasy, who had already helped friends evacuate their horses in the preceding days, had to evacuate her ranch as wildfires crept closer.
“That was a huge operation because of all the animals,” she said. “It took me 10 days to get everyone back home.”
“I came here with just a backpack”
Creasy, 45, a trained horse riding instructor, relocated from England to California in the early 2000s and set up her dog walking business in 2008.
She also worked for several years in Topanga as a horse riding instructor and trainer. “That’s how I fell in love with Topanga and then eventually bought my ranch,” she said.
“I came to the United States with a backpack. I started my dog walking business with very little. I only had a small car. I have done all of this myself without any other investment,” Creasy said.
“I've had the support of some amazing clients and friends. But that's pretty much it. It’s taken 17 years to get to this point and I'm really proud of it. But now, I'm not sure if it’s sustainable. I don't know if I can live with this stress all the time,” she said.
The constant threat of wildfires isn’t her only worry. “The expenses, the traffic, the hassle of trying to get a small business loan. It’s a lot,” said Creasy.
Creasy said she has set up a GoFundMe for her two employees who just lost their homes to the wildfires and a separate GoFundMe for her animal sanctuary.
She’s looking at small business loans and grants to help her businesses recover but is reluctant to tack on more debt after taking out loans to help her businesses bounce back from the pandemic.
Although she’s seen a little bit of a pickup in client calls coming in in recent days, Creasy is still down two employees as she tries to wrap her head around her financial losses.
“I'm not sure if it’s sustainable but I’m also too scared to leave because I can’t take all of my animals with me,” she said.