We are so grateful!
Thanks to you we have helped over 350 horses! This year, we wanted to share a very special story - that of the lovely mama and baby in our image above.
Autumn and Lizzie were run through a local auction together this summer, and unfortunately purchased by a buyer for a large kill pen out of Oklahoma. Little Lizzie was only 5 weeks old ... but the buyer was very upset to end up with a foal on his load. After loudly expressing his disgust and the sentiment that she was just going to be tramped and die anyway, a bystander stepped in and bought the baby for $100. Mama was loaded up, screaming for her baby, and headed off on a several days tour of auctions before ending up in Oklahoma, pegged to ship straight to slaughter according to her buyer.
This poor little filly, still nursing and way too young to leave her mama, started to go downhill fast. With no other horses to learn from, she had no clue how to eat pellets and wouldn't accept milk replacer. Distraught, the person who bought her to save her reached out for help, and that's how we ended up with a very high risk young horse in our care.
Thanks to your support we rushed her to the vet and into very knowledgeable hands to make sure she was ok and see if we could get her drinking. We started the process of looking for a nurse mare ... and posted online to see if there was any chance we could find the mama. No one really thought we would, but we sure had to try - we had to assume they were in the same area. Either way, Lizzie was now in good hands and with other horses, and starting to drink foal replacement ... but a nursemare or her very own mama would be best.
Believe it or not with our networking and again - your support - we found mama! She was standing in a pen of horses at another livestock auction, not for sale but waiting as the kill buyer purchased more to add to her trailer. She was depressed, lethargic, and had clearly given up. Her baby had been ripped from her side, crying, and her entire world turned upside down. While we all knew she was safe and about to have her baby back, there was no way to tell her that, and she just quietly followed the people onto the trailer with no curiosity or interest.
But that all changed when her trailer came down the driveway and she heard her baby! They called to each other even before the trailer came to a stop and were quickly reunited ... and after several happy whinnys and nuzzles little Lizzie nursed and all was right in the world.
The tragedy of this all is that Autumn (what we named the mama) is a mare who clearly adores and dotes on her foal and Lizzie is a secure, happy filly who expresses her attachment as well. Seeing them together now makes their separation so much worse.
Autumn, Lizzie, and the hundreds of other horses we've been able to step in and help thanks to your support want to say a huge thank you this Giving Season. Your continued support will help us say yes when horses are in need far into the future.
Thank you.
We need your help more than ever.
We are so grateful to have our hay - but need to finish paying for it!
Hay is at an all time high and we are struggling to pay for our winter hay to keep the horses fed. This year we will spend nearly $42,000 on hay for the horses - a huge increase over last year. We still need approximately $20,000 to pay it off, please consider a donation to help!