Actually, I’ve been wrong about a great number of things over the years. But I’m pretty sure I did something right today, no matter how the other parties involved feel about it. Considering my lack of patience for idiots and hair-trigger temper when it comes to how these horses are treated, the fact that no one needed to bail me out of jail today is pretty freaking impressive.
It’s going to be a long night.
Last Friday I went to visit with Shortcake, Ginger, and Baby Huey.
How cool is Huey’s color??
He’s just as cute as a button and and as sweet as Riley and Tootsie. He’s also as tall as his mother and he’s only four months old!!
This is the view that the horses have from their new barn.
I want to move in.
I just know that most, if not all, of my readers have at least heard of the movie “Deliverance”, right? So you’ll understand when I say that we drove through some country yesterday that had us looking around every corner for dirty hillbillies in wife-beater t-shirts carrying sawed-off shot guns. My friend, Lee, went with me and as we were rolling through some very beautiful, but remote land, he had his cell phone out the window playing the dueling banjos music and yelling “please don’t hurt us, we’re on your side!”
You had to be there. It was hilarious, in a really scary kind of way.
My F250 is still in the shop, so when someone called and asked me to take in two rescues that she had bailed out from the Fayetteville Animal Shelter, Bessie was the poor old truck that had to do the hauling. I think Lee and I were both thanking the Ford gods when we finally pulled into the driveway safe and sound at 10:30 last night! The whole trip was well over 300 miles if you include the time spent lost and asking directions from people who probably couldn’t have told us how to find their own home, let alone the animal shelter. And here’s a hint… a “fork” in the road is not the same as a turnoff that’s perpendicular to the road that you are on and has a stop sign.
The road to the shelter was narrow and twisted and they only paved the middle of the road, which would have been fine except that the drop off from pavement to gravel wasn’t a lot of fun with a horse trailer. We finally found the shelter at 5:07, seven minutes after they were supposed to close. We had left the house at noon. Ugh. Fortunately, we managed to catch a couple of the workers as they were packing up to leave and were able to find the horses and get them out of there.
The barn at the shelter was brand new and had never been used. Some genius had decided that the proper flooring for the barn was 3-4” gravel in the aisle and stalls! There were no stall mats or even sawdust in the stalls. Both horses had been locked in the stalls for a month with no turnout available. I suppose finding a large dog dish or tub for their food was too much to ask, so their grain was dumped onto the muck and the poor boys were expected to sift through their own feces to eat. The mini had a HUGE pile of food when we got there, most of it oats, and it was way too much for the little guy. I’m hoping they didn’t founder him out of ignorance!
The mini is terrified of people and acts like he’s been badly abused before. He was caught running down the four lane highway and had already caused six cars to wreck before he was apprehended several weeks ago. The bigger stallion is an incredibly sweet boy, well-behaved with great manners. They both hopped right on the trailer for us, even though the little one had run circles around me while walking to the trailer from the shelter.
The folks at the shelter had named the little one “Whitey” and the big one “Tonto”. Because of the circumstances of their escape from hillbilly hell, we renamed them Jed and Jethro on the way home. For now, they are in a small pen in the yard, under the willow tree. Once we’ve tamed Jed down a bit, I’ll get Doc out to castrate and also look at the bloody sacroid on poor Jed’s penis. After brain surgery and vaccinations, Jethro can go out with the main herd and Jed can go in with River.
Here’s poor little Jed. We tried giving him treats this morning, but if my hand got close enough to touch a whisker he was rearing and trying to get away. He’s got a thick coat and big pot belly, so we’re probably looking at a big worm load. I’ll give him half a dose of Ivermectin this morning and follow it up with another half dose next week. I hate leaving that long lead rope on him, but that’s the only way we’re going to catch him. When we picked him up they had a 6’ dog leash attached to his makeshift halter and even that wasn’t long enough and it took a long time to get close enough to catch him in the stall.
Jethro has got to be one of the sweetest stallions ever! Walking him down the driveway last night with just the moonlight to guide us, he was the epitome of good behavior. Don Juan was pacing the fence and giving him the stink eye and Satin was on the other fence line flirting with him, but he only paid attention to me, walking slowly beside me and stopping and standing still when I asked. When Timmy ran up to greet him I expected a stallion explosion, but he just kept walking past Timmy and followed me to his pen. I’ve met stallions before that were this well behaved, but they were raised right, and not kept in a stall or turned out by themselves their whole life. I just don’t expect stallions with this nice of a personality to show up as rescues.
Jethro was found running loose with five other horses. Someone came along and claimed the other five, but said Jethro didn’t belong to them. Hmmmm… I wonder if they were just tired of owning a stallion and didn’t feel the responsibility to castrate him, or at least put up some electric fence to separate him from the mares?
He’s wormy and thin, but not terribly so. We’ll start him on a half dose of Ivermectin and another half dose next week. I don’t think it will take long to have him fat and shiny again.
Who knows about his breeding for sure, but he does remind me a little of a Tennessee Walker the way he moves, as well as those big ears of his. He’s just a sweetheart, that much I know!
Hidden Meadows Equine Rescue, located in Berkeley County, WV, has closed it’s doors – and not voluntarily.
Did you read the article? Watch the video? Good.
HMER was founded in September of 2008, just three months after we started Horse Haven Hollow. HMER is in West Virginia. The authorities just seized 53 horses and two cattle from HMER. At one point this summer, we were up to 55 horses. I can’t find out if HMER was a 501(c)(3) organization or not – it doesn’t say anywhere on their Facebook page and their website is now gone.
That seems to be where the similarities end. But it still bothers me and in the back of my head there’s a nagging little voice that always questions me. Are you sure the horses are healthy? Are they happy? Are they better off with you than where they came from? Are you doing everything right? ARE YOU SURE???
That nagging little voice sounds suspiciously like my second grade teacher, Mrs. Bruce.
But anyways, this is what I put myself through on a daily basis. This is why I show you current pictures of the horses as often as I can – I’m hoping that if something doesn’t look right, someone will call me out on it. I don’t want to become the next rescuer begging for money to save just one more horse. I don’t want to be the rescue threatening to put horses down just to raise money. I don’t want to wake up one morning and decide that no one can care for the horses as well as I do, so I should just keep them all and become a hoarder.
I don’t know the woman behind HMER. I can’t say that she started the rescue with good intentions or not. I’m hoping that she did and just got in over her head. I’d like to think she had gainful employment and didn’t just beg for money on the internet. I may never know for sure what her reasons were for letting those horses starve. Whatever her excuses, I can tell you that they aren’t good enough.
…I’m still up and it’s almost midnight. It’s late, I’m exhausted, but I know there’s absolutely no point in trying to go to bed since my head is filled with concrete. Hello, allergy season! I’ve been waiting for you! Now we get to spend a lot of nights up late together finding interesting things to dally with on the internet. What fun!
So guess what I learned tonight? According to Veromi, there are five people in the U.S. with the same first and last name as me. Two of the people listed are me, and it looks like two other listings for my name are the same person as well since they are both listed in Ft. Worth, TX. Three people total in the U.S. with my name, which means two other women probably grew up being called “jeanne weanie”. Sorry, ladies. I feel your pain.
But you know what’s really interesting about this? One of the women is a legal assistant in CA, but the other raises racing Quarterhorses in Texas! What are the odds that out of the three of us, two would work in the horse industry? Opposite ends of the industry, but still…
I’m just glad we’re 2,000 miles apart so she won’t be trying to send me any of her broken down horses!
On a side note, go check out Jasmine’s latest training post. If anyone doubts that I ride these horses myself, I’ll be happy to send you a picture of me post-accident. But I warn you now, it ain’t pretty!
There’s a lot of pain and wisdom in Lucille’s eyes. Brannon thinks her feet may be back to normal and pain free in a year. That’s a long time to have to be on bute just to be able to hobble around the yard. :(
That’s Shane’s head in the background. The first horse is his new wife, Lacy. I love this shot because of how their heads are lined up.
I had to pick on Shane’s adopter for getting Lacy from someone else instead of coming to me, but I was just teasing him. She is a very beautiful horse!
Shane and Apache introducing themselves.
Steel in his home. He’s soooooo spoiled!
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A very dopey dobey.
Fraggle. I love him. Just don’t ask me what color he is because I still haven’t figured that one out.
Things are happening fast around here this month and there are big changes coming up. I’ll try and post as often as I can, but no guarantees. October should slow down a bit and I’ll try to catch everyone up then.
I wrote about why Apache came back to the farm over on the Training the Unwanted blog, in case you haven’t read it yet.
Marvin, who adopted Baby Girl over a year ago, stopped by the other day to see if I had any small horses that would be good for his wife. Something gentle and kind, that liked attention. He had seen Jasmine and Cheyenne on the website and I had told him about Apache over the phone. When he arrived, he had decided that he did not want Apache, but wanted one of the girls instead. Cheyenne introduced herself first, then Jas came over to say hello. Then he saw Apache… and the two girls were quickly forgotten.
Sometimes it’s just that way. Some people come here with a preconceived notion of what size/breed/color horse they are looking for, but then they see the complete opposite and that’s the one they end up adopting. I love it when that happens!
I also got to check up on a few other adopted horses today. Remember Shane when he got here last October? He’s a different horse now!
Baby Girl wasn’t starved when she got here, but she was terrified of people and not even halter broke. She was gangly and funny looking and had never had her long feet trimmed. Now she’s a real beauty of a mare who has a special bond with her adopter. She’s two this year and will be broke to ride next year.
Jacob was just a tad ribby when he came here last year. He had originally been adopted as a family horse and companion for a young Andalusian colt, but he was returned a short while later because he was too aggressive with the colt and much preferred the company of an older stallion. He wasn’t here for long before he was adopted again and this time his only purpose in life is pleasure riding. He’s low man on the totem pole in a herd of five horses (all smaller than him), and has a huge stall and a shed full of hay just for him. He’s spoiled rotten and it shows!
Happy Labor Day tomorrow! I, for one, am not planning on doing any labor unless it involves saddling up a horse for a trail ride!
A friend of mine recently had to put down her old appaloosa gelding who had gone both blind and deaf. He was running into things in a pasture where he’d lived for years, causing himself pain and injury, besides just being very unhappy. Her husband thought the best remedy for the heartache would be to find a foal to raise. My friend thought it best to get a well-broke and kid-friendly horse for their many nieces and nephews. So they compromised and got both!
When I delivered the two tonight, there was only a couple of minutes of trotting around and establishing dominance, then everyone settled down to graze in a tight knit group around Cadence.
Dahlia was tickled to have all of that well-groomed pasture to eat and never really bothered with all that dominance nonsense. She didn’t even seem to care when the other horses took a sniff at Cadence, as long as they weren’t aggressive about it.
See that paint mare on the right in the picture above? I bet you don’t recognize her, but that’s Abby! The first picture below was taken when we rescued her back in March of 2009.
This is her now!
I never did get pictures of her when she was adopted last year because she was delivered on the same day that her sister, Genesis, was delivered and I used up all my memory card space on pictures of Genesis in her new home. Oops!
I’m going to miss little Cadence. The day she was born, I swear she hit the ground running and bucking! She was always playing and entertaining herself and any humans that happened to be watching, including Doc. She had him chuckling the last time he was out because she kept charging around at top baby speed and slipped in some wet hay and went down. She hopped up and gave him a look like it was his fault, then charged right at him and swerved at the last second. After that, her nickname became “Little Miss Assitude”!
Yes, Dahlia. I’ll miss you too!
Good thing they’re not very far away. *sniff*
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