5-23-08

Wow, the hay fundraising took another leap upward today, thanks to all of the horses supporters we only have to raise another 61 bales worth, that means 323 bales were donated today! Thank you so much for each and every bale donated, and a special thank you to Tina for making the thermometer leap today with your $1000 donation and to Jennifer for your $500 donation towards the hay drive! We are almost there!

Tawnee showed horses today and Paleface has found her forever home with a repeat adopting family. They wanted to add another horse to their family, and they chose Paleface! She will have a really wonderful home.

Jason delivered Paleface on his way to take Willy and Baron to their new home. Here is Paleface enjoying her new home!

Paleface first came into our program on April 13th from 2 auction rescue ago. She looks so much better now, above, then she did when she first came in, below. Now she has a great home and will be going in for 30 days of training with a great trainer!

Baron and Willy are enjoying their new family. They will now be pampered and doodled over for hours on end. Thanks guys for adopting these two wonderful boys and giving our 500th rescued horse such a great home!

The minute Jason got back to the rescue he had to rush off to cover the 1000 bales of hay still sitting in the field. Dark ominous rain clouds were floating over, and the occasional sprinkle let it be know that very likely a significant portion of rain would fall. We don't want to lose the hay before we even buy it, so Jason hiked about 1/2 mile across the hay field with 2000 square feet of plastic. Climbing up the 15' of hay bales, he struggled to secure the plastic against wind and rain. It's nice to know that it is covered and unless we get a tornado it'll be safe.

Frosty broke out of his pen this evening and it took about 45 minutes to get him convinced that he would rather be back in the pen then out. He is back in there now and the electric fence is fully functional again so he probably won't try that again. He definitly thought the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. "Be content with such things as you have!"

Have a great memorial day weekend and look for a blog update Sunday evening!

5-22-08

Since the last blog, generous kind people have donated 171 more bales! We only have 384 left to go, we are almost there! Please help spread the word. We now have a day for the hay to be moved: this Sunday. We are stepping out in faith that the funds will be there to write the check on.

This morning we worked on emails, phone calls, bookwork, etc. Jason spent countless hours entering data into Quickbooks. An accountant he does not want to be, but alas he must do the job of one.

Tawnee headed out to the vet and was there until about 5 pm this evening. Two of the horses, Barbi and Rosey, needed to be checked by the vet due to lameness. Barbi was in a lot of pain continually in her front feet and we had to have it checked out. After a thorough examination Dr Weaver to our joy told us that Rosey is fine and not in pain. An old injury with scare tissue makes her move differently than most horses, but she is very happy and able to be ridden. Barbi's received xrays and the vet sadly had to tell us that she had severe lower ringbone and would never live pain free again. It would progressively get worse, with no hope of any kind of a recovery. Our vet recommended that the most kind thing was to have her humanely euthanized, happy in the knowledge that she was loved and cared for.

Then Tawnee was hit with more bad news! Our vet informed us that Sunny had a fracture in her pelvis. Even if her diagnosis was wrong it was something very major that would take months of rehab and she believed it would be a downward health spiral for Sunny if we tried to prolong her life. Sunny was on pain medication so she could put some weight on her leg, but you could still tell she was in pain from her eyes. Tawnee had to make the hard choice to have Sunny humanely euthanized under the vets recommendation today. Poor Tawnee was hit with double whammy's today!

On a brighter note, Cowboy is doing great even though he hasn't had his surgery yet. Our poor vet has been overwhelmed with the birthing and breeding season. She blocked the nerve today to make sure he was a good candidate for surgery, and sure enough, he seemed to be perfectly fine on that leg, but started limping on the other leg. He'll have to get surgery on both legs. His surgery is scheduled for Friday the 30th.

And to make Tawnee's day worse, she got a flat on the way back to the rescue. A huge nail sticking out of the tire. At least it had enough air in there to make it back to the rescue. She is counting her blessings that it did not happen on the way to the vet.

Kt Beaner is a great cart horse! Tawnee was able to harness him up this evening and take him for a drive around the neighbours pasture and down the road. He did absolutely great! Tawnee definitely needed some therapy after having a really rough day. Beaner loves being driven, we were a little concerned that once he was hooked up he would want to run like the wind, but he was very calm and collected. He only trotted when asked, he was willing to please in every regard. He even pulled the cart through the round pen gate like an old pro. Beaner is getting more valuable as the price of gas goes up. "Grass not Gas!" They need to start putting hitching posts in front of stores again and hire poop scoopers to clean the towns up...

5-21-08

Today's hay drive started off with gusto, but then petered out as the day wore on. Last night we had raised the funds to buy 411 bales, and as of this evening we are at 445. We need some help, please xpost wherever you can! Anyone you think that has an extra $6 please let them know of our great need. Every bit really does help! We must keep the momentum going. We can do this!

We headed out to the vet today with Sunny, Baron, Willy and Gracie. Sunny has received an injury, probably from another horse, and we took her to the vet to see what is wrong and hopefully get her right again. She simply didn't want to put any weight on her back right leg. She is happy at the vet and we know they will do what they can to get her all back to health once again. With all the horses here we felt it would be in her best interest to keep her at the vet where she can receive the best medical care.

Baron and Willy are having their health checkup before heading to their new home, which we recommend adopters do.
We took Gracie to the vet, and the vet confirmed from her teethe that she looked to be around 40 years old. With her old age, cushings, and blindness, our vet agreed that the kindness thing to do for Gracie was to have her humanely euthanized. Gracie passed away knowing that she was loved and cared for deeply. She was groomed, bathed, given yummy sweets and basically had a queens treatment while she was at our rescue. When the decision was made, she was given all the sweet grain she wanted and Tawnee gave her a nice long massage then she passed away happily and felt very loved. We are glad that we were able to save her from the Killer Buyers and give her a happy and peaceful ending to her long life.

We were able to bring Blaze home from the vet today. Dusty and Blaze were very happy to see each other, here they are meeting over the gate. It was so great to be able to reunite them! They are both pain free and can walk freely now thanks to their multiple surgeries. Watching them be able to move without pain is so rewarding!

We received a new arrival today from Butte County Animal Control: Navajo. He is around 4 or 5 years old, malnourished gelding who needs a lot of groceries, love and rehab. He was happy to come here and see all the horses he can be friends with!

Navajo is very thin, his bones and ribs are protruding from his skin. His coat is very shabby, his feet look like they have never been trimmed, and he was no doubt infested with parasites. Becky, we need you to come do our own "Groomer Has It!" on this guy!

Today we got another mysterious Amazon.com gift. This time it is The Noble Wilds, a picture book about different animals in the wild. It is such a beautiful book, thank you for brightening up our office Tsong Long.

The auction rescue received a major contribution today! We are now at $2300 thanks to an extremely generous donation by Tina G! You should have been here to hear Tawnee whooping and hollering with excitement when the email notification came in from Paypal. "We can save a lot of horses with this donation!" Thank you so much Tina for brightening up our day.

5-20-08

The fundraising for the hay continues at a rapid pace. Thank you everyone so much for your generosity! We have raised the funds for 411 bales thanks to all the extremely generous donations. We were pleasantly surprised to find out we had more funds raised than we believed. For some reason Paypal doesn't always email us when we receive a donation, so there was more than we thought. What is currently on the thermometer is what is currently raised as of this evening. Please continue to spread the word about our urgent need! This is the largest fundraiser we have ever done for feed, we really need your help, the clock is ticking and time is running out.

We got a great update about Cody, now named "Tory." Tory is a Peruvian Paso that came into our program in 2006. He is still doing great in his adoptive home.

Here is a picture of Tory when he originally came into our program. He was just greenbroke and needing a loving home. Now he is very well trained and has all the love he can handle. We are so thankful we were able to help him on his journey of life.

Today was very busy! 6 horses were placed into adoption pending today. Tawnee spent most of the day on the phone and showing horses. The volunteers that were out today kept reminding Tawnee to get into the shade whenever she was on the phone. She usually just kept still so the walk about phone wouldn't have even more static. We need to find a better system that will go all over our ranch. If you're ever on the phone and it ever goes dead, just call back, Tawnee was probably too far from the office or dropped dead from heat stroke.

5-19-08

This morning we started out with only $10 for the $6250 needed for the over 1000 bales of hay that we have committed to take and pay for this week. We would like to thank all of our supporters for pitching together and getting this hay project underway so speedily. We are now at $1538, that is 256 bales of hay that have been paid for. We are over 25% done! We can do this! Even if you can only donate 1 bale of hay, that would be a great help in feeding the rescued horses. Every dollar really helps!

Our goal and work today has been towards the hay fund raising, but thanks to a very generous donation of $300 towards the next auction rescue, this has gotten our wheels turning towards the next auction on June 15th. This time it lands on Father's day! So, it's being called the Fathers Day Auction Rescue Effort. Last auction was on Mothers Day, this one is landing on Father's Day, so please consider donating in memory or to honor that special father in your life. Come on girls, donate in honor of the special dad in your life! Let's just hope the dads appreciate it, they would probably prefer a new necktie or aftershave, but this is something new and for the guy that has everything.

Got a great update on Whiley and Freddie. They are both doing really well. Here is a nice picture of Whiley.

Freddie is certainly one of the most beautiful horses we have had. Just look at him prancing in the evening sunlight.

We don't have TV, so a big Thank YOU! to one of our supporters that works at HBO who sent us an official DVD of the horse racing and slaughter episode of Real Sports. It was such a great show, we can't believe the gruesome slaughter footage they were able to put on the air, I know it was no doubt hard to watch for most people to see the terrible pictures and video, but it really does wake people up and shows people the reality of what happens. It's a real wake up call to our government to do something. When our staff is feeling overwhelmed and are losing track of the big picture, we get them focused again by showing them the realities of slaughter and reminding them that we are making a difference, and each horse's life we save would have most likely been ended at one of those terrible slaughterhouses. Thank you HBO for exposing what really happens! We applaud you for it and would love to know where one can have a horse euthanized for $60...

We hit 500,000 visitors to our website today! Carolyn S was nice enough to leave us a message in our guestbook, we were hoping we would know who it was! 1/2 million visitors since we launched our website in Feb 2004. Too bad each person didn't donate $1. When our website was first launched, it was white background, reddish font, with old fashioned black and white clip art of random horses. Now with over 500,000 visitors and over 500 horses saved, our website looks a lot better, but is still designed by Jason and Tawnee. Below is a sample that was printed off our website way back when, stuck way away in our archives which we pulled out for your enjoyment. It definitely humble beginnings. We can't thank everyone enough who has supported us both emotionally and financially the last 4+ years.

5-18-08

It's time for the hay to be moved in! We have the opprotunity to buy 1000 bales of hay for $6 a bale. Jason went down and got a bale of hay from both growers, and the horses definitly like one better than the other, so it's in the works! If everyone could give just $6, we would have the funds to purchase this hay in no time at all. It's only $6! Less than 2 gallons of gas. Less than a movie ticket. Only $6! Dusty definitly loves the new hay, he wants to see a bunch of it show up soon.

Deb was out riding, training and evaluating horses today. Thank you so much for doing such a great job in the 99 degree heat! Summer's early, spring never happened, the horses are all happy and enjoy playing in their water troughs. Tuxedo sure is a beautiful boy!

Becky came out and also volunteered today. She really made Gracie feel really good today! She's such a sweet old girl, probably about 40 years old, but she sure loved her bath! Tawnee was showing horses almost all day long. Elsa is being fostered to adopt. Usually we don't do foster to adopt, but since her adoption application was still being approved, and they are only a few miles away, we felt comfortable letting Elsa spend the night at her new home. We are going to miss her, but we're so glad she is finally home forever!

Willie and Baron also got adopted today and will be going home later this week. They are going to be pampered and loved on by a family that absolutely love them.

Wow, another busy Sunday has come to a close. It is such a rewarding part of rescue work to see horses go into good homes and people beaming with joy at their new family members.

5-16-08

Today was a little less hectic than most days, it gave us a chance to get a lot of minor things done that if not attended to become major problems. Troughs cleaned, horse baths, etc. With the heat some of the horses really enjoy a nice cool bath. Some just stand in utter bliss and others take off running like the end of the world has come.

We brought Bunny back from the foster home as her adopter is going to come up on Sunday and adopt her. Yay for Bunny! She's been with us a long time, let's hope she goes to her forever home Sunday. We took Levi and Nugget out to the 10 acre irrigated pasture foster home. These horses have had little to no interest from adopters, and they will spend the summer out there. Hopefully an approved adopter will want give them the forever home they deserve!

Phoenix, out at the foster home, is looking pretty good for an old guy, he really is missing Bunny but he has some new friends to fall in love with.

The quest for cheap hay continues, we talked to a local grower that has a grass mix for $5.50 a bale out in the field. That's extremely cheap for hay, probably for almost anywhere in the country other than Oregon and Texas. We did the math and we need right about 2500 bales a year. The big key with this is, cheap hay is only available right now, and then we'll be right back to $10-$13 a bale, and it may even hit $15 a bale this winter, so we need to get what we can right away. The more money that is saved by buying cheap hay will go right into saving more horses.

Have a great weekend, we're going to rest, it looks like Sunday is going to be Busy with a capital B! Talking about B's, Tawnee, founder of NorCal Equine Rescue, is having one of many birthday's she's had tomorrow. She's having the birthday blues, after having so many, she gets tired of them. Birthdays come around so often it's nothing special so she says.