The next auction is just this weekend and we need your help to save lives! As you know, every month we rescue as many horses as we can from auctions in both California and Nevada, saving them from slipping into the slaughter pipeline. Auctions are one of the main ways horses get into the slaughter pipeline, where they are shipped without food or water for days on end to Mexico or Canada for slaughter. Our goal this month is to raise $6,000 for the rescue, transport, veterinarian care, training and sheltering of slaughter pipeline horses. Please donate right now to help us reach our goal, click here.
Sunday morning found Jason weed eating before he headed off to his job in town. It’s nice he was able to get up early and get some of the rapidly growing weeds knocked down to size before he headed to work.
Angel listened carefully to the weed eater. She had never heard one before, and she kept turning her ears back and forth, trying to figure out if it was an angry swarm of hornets or not. Angel was born with severe juvenile cataracts, she may be able to see a little bit of light and shadows, but new things are always hard to figure out for her. Since she can’t see it, she has to listen very carefully to figure out if it is dangerous or not.
Kirsty is busy working with and training Asia. She is teaching her flexion and refreshing her mind on riding. She is a very sweet, willing horse, she just seems a bit rusty in her training in a few different places.
The shelter opens at noon, and before the shelter even opened there were trucks and trailers lining up. Some of the people in line were bringing horses in for the Last Act of Kindness program. For a number of years we would accept Last Act of Kindness horses on the second Sunday of the month. Since we have been at our new shelter facility the last couple years, we have been accepting Last Act of Kindness horses any time we are open. We found that people had horses that were suffering, and were making them wait until the second Sunday of the month to bring them to us. We don’t want to prolong any suffering or pain in any way, and just a reminder for those that have horses in need of this program, we are open from 12:00 – 5:00 Sunday – Thursday, except holidays and rainy days.
The first folks waiting at the gate were surrendering these adorable little Nigerian dwarf miniature goats to us.
We decided to call them Larry, Moe and Curly. They are so cute, and they settled right into their new pen.
Phoenix needed his hooves done, and his knees are completely fused, so he is unable to fold his knees to get a normal trim. He has to be sedated and laid down in the specially padded chute.
Meanwhile Kirsty was working with Wind Song. She is doing great with her desensitization training!
Skye is doing great with his lessons as well. He had 90 days of professional training, but had sat for 6 years before he came to us, and pretty much forgot a lot of it.
Kirsty had been working with him from the ground since he came, and finally felt confident he was ready to be ridden for the first time at the shelter.
Skye did very well and we were so excited to see him make this huge step in his progress.
Monday Jason headed off with the big dump trailer for some alfalfa oat cubes. We generally order a semi-load of hay which costs just over $6,000 a load. This time when we called to schedule another delivery, we were shocked to hear the price had jumped to almost $8,000 for the load! That is over a 30% price increase since the last time we ordered hay. We didn’t have that kind of money budgeted for the next load of hay, so we bought some cubes to hold us over. Hopefully they will cut hay soon and the price will come back to somewhat normal.
At the cube factory their special tractor loaded the dump trailer right up in no time.
It only took 3 scoops to load 3,000 pounds of cubes. The cubes cost the equivalent to paying about $14 a bale, which is a lot less than $15.50 a bale that we were quoted.
We know from experience that horses do great on the cubes, for about a year we fed cubes exclusively and all the horses that came through our shelter did great on them.
Skye had some potential previously approved adopters come out and absolutely fell in love with him. They placed a hold on him and are anxiously waiting for transportation arrangements to be made.
Tuesday Kirsty was busy working with Dakota, a Mustang mare. She believes that Dakota may have been a prison trained horse, or whoever trained her was rough with her mouth. Kirsty is working on trying to get Dakota to respond to soft cues with the bit.
We would like to introduce Jack, a very adorable mini jack gelding donkey. He is very very cute, somewhat friendly, he just needs some one and one and attention, and he should be following you around in no time. If you would like to add this little guy to your family, please contact us.
Lung-Ta was getting her hooves done. She will be heading to her new home in Florida soon, transportation arrangements are in the works.
Wind Song again found herself in the round pen with her lessons. She is such a cute little horse and we can’t wait to see Kirsty riding her around the shelter.
Wednesday at the shelter it was rather slow, but this very nice couple surrendered a horse for the Last Act of Kindness program. Their vet had recommended euthanasia and they also knew it was time. While at the shelter they fell in love with Larry, Moe and Curly, and adopted them. It will help fill the empty place in their hearts.
Thank you all for your support, please remember our auction rescue, we need your help to save lives! Click here.