07-30-08

Today Jason headed off to deliver Dusty and Blaze to their new home finally. They've been with us a long time. Tawnee and Nadia went to the Orland Livestock Auction to see about rescuing some horses. Nadia had never been to an auction, and Orland is the only one close that had an auction day while Nadia is visiting.

There were a total of 6 horses at the auction today. There were also about 6 killer buyers, all the normal ones that frequent the Roseville auction. The Orland auction is a lot smaller of a horse sale than Roseville, the KB's must be getting desperate.

A total of 5 horses were saved, and again the KB's drove away with empty trailers. Nadia is actually the proud new owner of 4 horses now! Tawnee bought the other horse with the remainder of the auction fund, having a grand total of 40 horses saved with the last auction rescue fundraising of $10,000. That is so amazing! As the airlines are doubling their fees for checking a second bag, we assume Nadia is planning on donating the horses when she leaves, but maybe not...

As Jason took the trailer to Shasta today to deliver Dusty and Blaze (330 mile round trip) Nadia and Tawnee drove to the auction in Nadia's rental car, which could not pull a trailer. The idea was to have Jason stop by the auction on his way back to the rescue since it was in the same general direction. To our surprise, one of the auction workers offered to deliver the horses, 120 miles round trip, for only $50! Too good to be true, so Tawnee said "Yes!" What a great deal.

Nadia is more than thrilled with her new herd of horses. This is a sweet gentle gelding.

Jason finally made it to Mt Shasta and Dusty and Blaze's new mommy is so thrilled with them! They will have 11 acres of irrigated pasture to romp around on. Cathy donated to have both their navicular surgeries done, and has supported them along their road to recovery. And now, she has given them their forever home. She also adopted Mac as well, who will be going to a trainer next month for basic ground manner training as he is currently wild.

Finally the Petco Foundation check arrived! Back in March we submitted a grant to build 25 new covered stalls with runs, for a total of $27,000. Well, the check made it today, and Tawnee couldn't open it fast enough! It was not for the full $27,000, but it is a great start! The check was for $1,000. Thank you so much for your support Petco! Every dollar definitely helps! We are going to make sure $27,000 will still cover the cost as prices of metal is raising faster than the price of oil it seems, and we will begin the huge fundraising to make winter facilities a reality.

Here is the basic layout of what it will look like, the top right corner with 4 stalls and a breezeway is our current mare motel. Basically it would be an extension of our mare motel with 25 pens instead of only 4. You all know we could really use this, especially with winter coming right up.