09-11-08

First thing this morning Tawnee wrote up an email and sent it to our e-news group, asking people to vote on the Petfinder foundation grant. It was the first personal email sent to our email list. Typically we sent out e-news, but this time it was just a friendly request for some help. The response has been amazing! We went from 160 votes this morning to over 2300 this evening, from eighth place to 2nd. As we have no idea when Petfinder is picking the winner, we are really hoping to stay in at worst case 2nd place, but hopefully move to 1st place! Right on our home page you can vote, and see up to date top 10 in the poll courtesy of Petfinder. We also have an email you can copy/paste and send on to all your friends. Every vote is potentially worth $5,000! There is also a printable flyer. You can print them off, head to town and hand them out, hang them on bulletin boards and whatever you would like. You can vote daily, so for everyone that voted today, tomorrow you can vote again! A huge thank you to everyone that voted. Still 19 days left in Sept, so we're all sitting on a ticking time bomb marathon of votes. We are the only horse rescue in the top 10, so even if you have another favorite rescue, why not vote for the horses? We need your click click clicks...

You haven't seen Sally on the blog for awhile because she was unloading her hay, fell off, and broke her arm. She seems to be doing better, and she came out and gave a clinic on how to remove horse shoes today to students of bare foot trimming techniques. Bare foot trimmers usually just work on, well, bare foot horses, so they don't have to remove shoes very often. First the pro, Sally, showed everyone how it is done.

Then Sally handed the tools over and said "Your turn!"

Each one got the opportunity to work in the hot sun pulling shoes. We really enjoy all the work that gets done when Sally has a clinic here. Sally told us we need to get a lot of horses at the auction with shoes on. It's great to get the horses shoes pulled and feet trimmed up.

Tawnee headed out to the vet with Pistol to see what was going on with her hind legs. It seems that there was some lameness or weakness. Come to find out, our vet had treated Pistol back in 2005 for EPM, so we were able to get a lot of history on her. She has a little weakness in her hind legs from the EPM which makes it look like something is wrong. The vet says she'll be fine for trail riding and some trotting around.

While Tawnee was gone Nook's soon-to-be new mommy came out and played with him. Tawnee had the camera.

The auction horses THANK YOU!!! We got the $1500 pledge today, and some more auction donations, so the total as of this evening is $6362. Your generosity in saving lives from slaughter is so overwhelming. We will be moving some of the funds to next months auction rescue as we simply do not have the space available to rescue another 35 horses. We are planning on rescuing around 20 horses Sunday, but, you never know what heart strings will pull the bidding hand up in the air. Bidding against KB's is always nerve wracking.

Now that the auction funds have been raised we would like to re-focus on the hay barn. Only 19 days until Sep 30th, at which time we would really like to be able to order the barn so it can be raised before winter. At the vet today, she was telling Tawnee that her hay grower up in Oregon ran out of hay, which has been a first. It's shaping up to be a bad winter for hay, it's really important we can get this hay barn up and full of hay before all the economical hay has been sold out. With the high price of hay, horses will need to find refuge here more than ever. Let's get this barn raised! We currently have $1482 raised.


What an emotionally overwhelming day, watching the votes come in and the auction dollars come in. Our words can never share the true heartfelt appreciation we have for each and every one of you.