This blog is to catch you up over the last week. On Monday the 24th Jason was on the road to pick up horses. His GPS took him down a very beautiful road, that had a locked gate at the end. So he turned around and drove farther up the main road and down the next road his GPS took him. Back to the same locked gate. After being lost for some time he arrived an hour late to his destination.
The first horse was an elderly horse named Coco who has some health issues. He took one last gallop around his pasture and then stood quietly on the other end of the field while Jason walked up to him and put the halter on. Then he was led to the waiting trailer. One last look at his home, and he loaded right up.
The next stop was to pick up a horse from a lady who could no longer keep him due to health problems. She was so impressed with our program to help horse owners that she decided to surrender one of her other horses too as he husband didn’t want to keep supporting so many horses.
The elderly mare was cranky and didn’t want the second horse to load up with her, but she was happy riding in the front with Coco so the 2nd horse got to ride in the back by himself. They all made it safely back to the shelter.
Right after Jason got back to the shelter with the 3 horses, Jim pulled in with a load of goats. He had been out rescuing and saved 11 precious babies!
They were unloaded into the office and Tawnee got busy IDing and getting their information.
Steve and Jason were unloading the rescued horses. This is Foxy, the 2nd horse that the lady surrendered. She is about 11 years old, trained to ride but has some behavioral issues. Kirsty will be working with her.
Tuesday was the big auction rescue in Nevada seen in the last blog. If you missed that blog, click here.
Tuesday at the shelter a potential adopter came out to meet Splash. She really fell in love with her, she got her application in and anxiously waited for approval.
A very elderly horse was surrendered into the Last Act of Kindness program. She is about 36 years old and her health is rapidly declining.
As many of you know, we were marbling some of the mares as a birth control method, but, we have abandoned it as the marbles do not stay in. Hopefully science can find a cost effective means of sterilizing mares.
Kirsty worked with Blaze. She is such a cute little POA.
Thursday was a vet day at the shelter. The first animal he saw was Bailey, one of the baby goats. He had a bit of a runny nose. The vet gave him some medicine to help fix him up.
We had another rescue come to our shelter to utilize our Wild Horse Squeeze as they needed to pregnancy check some of their mares that were unhandled.
The vet also looked over the horses that were surrendered into our Last Act of Kindness program to make sure it was the right decision for them. It is very sad, but we are so thankful that we have this program to keep horses like this one from being shipped to slaughter.
We adopted out baby goats over the week too.
Friday Jim headed out to go to another auction to save some horses and pick up more baby goats from the dairy.
The dairy had 13 baby goats, and the auction had this poor crippled nanny goat that no one wanted. All in all Jim rescued 14 goats and 1 horse.
The nanny goat really likes all the babies and will even let them all nurse off of her as she has milk. Of course she can’t supply all their food, but she gives them motherly love.
The horse from the auction is a big draft cross who we have named Big Jack.
Big Jack is extremely emaciated and needs a lot of food. He has some strange lumps that we are going to have our vet look at. We are hoping the best for this big gentle guy.
Sunday we had a lot of horses surrendered. The first two were from a family who could no longer keep them. They were very well loved and cared for.
This is Lakota, a 17 year old gelding who is trained to ride. He has been extremely abused in his life, and has had his tongue almost severed in 3 different places with harsh bits. Wire bits and bicycle chain bits are completely unacceptable.
This is Momma, a 16 year old paint that is trained to ride. They both have lameness issues that we are going to have our vet check out.
Kirsty was getting ready to say “Goodbye” to Splash. She has taken Splash from being just halter trained to being a nice riding horse.
Splash’s new mom was so excited to be adopting such a beautiful young horse.
She loaded right up into the trailer and we are all happy to see Splash start her new life.
We had some more adopters come out to look at the baby goats.
They ended up adopting 3 of them!
The last horse surrendered on Sunday is Asia, a 10 year old Azteca mare. We are told that she was abandoned. The owners of the pasture she was abandoned at tell us she was ridden before being abandoned, and that she is a kind, quiet mare that likes people.
She settled right into her stall and she is certainly a gorgeous horse.
The nanny is such a good momma for the babies. She licks the babies, snuggles with them, and makes each one feel special.
Monday Larry, Alex and April hit the road to go pick up some horses.
After they left, a truck and trailer came in with a horse that needed to be surrendered into the Last Act of Kindness program. They were hoping we could find him a home.
We would like you to meet Harley Man. He is a very beautiful 23 year old QH gelding who is in excellent shape. We too are hoping that we will find him a wonderful home.
April and Larry made it back with the 3 horses they picked up. One was a returned adoption, and 1 is extremely lame and in a lot of pain, and the other one is a beautiful 17.2 hand Thoroughbred gelding.
As you can see from reading this blog, we have been extremely busy. In March we rescued more animals than we have ever rescued in a single month. A total of 126 animals came to our shelter in March! Tawnee was anxiously waiting for the month to be over as she could hardly get any more files into the months binder. Those 126 animals all had to eat, and we are needing to order another load of hay very soon, which will cost over $6,000. Please make a donation right now to our Feed Fund, each bale of hay costs about $13, if you could donate just 1 bale it will really help! Click here.
Thank you all so much for your support, it’s what keeps the shelter helping animals just like the ones in today’s blog.