11-20-08

We got a great update on Ruby today, rescued from the March auction. "
She is doing great. She is very cuddly. When we adopted her, she had a sore back, she seems to be healing up fine. My trainer started working with her last week and she says Ruby is smart and will be easy to teach. She has some issues with trailering and backing out of the wash rack. She has also become a big sister to an orphan PMU foal. The foal loves her and Ruby allows the foal to follow her around and nuzzles her. They even eat out of the same feeder. They are best buddies. "

When we get updates like this it gives us time to reflect and think "Where would that horse be if we hadn't of rescued it?"

This morning Tawnee started the day out by drawing blood from Zanita, who has been having a really hard time keeping her weight up even though we are pouring the food to her 24/7. Nothing was really found when Tawnee took the blood to the vet. We will keep doing our best for the poor girl and if she keeps dropping weight more evaluations will be done.

We've been pouring feed and love to the three horses that were so skinny when they came to us last week. Today was the day that they were going to see the vet for a diagnosis. They've really been enjoying having full tummies.

The vet checked each one out, and the sad news is that it was a downhill road for these horses from here on out. She said it would not be fair to keep them going through another winter, being so skinny the cold would literally kill them, and they each had other health issues to exaggerate their emaciation. The one we had the best hope for a recovery had eye problems, one eye was completely fogged and the other was somewhat foggy. The vet told us they were eye ulcers. We said goodbye to these three sweet horses. We are thankful that they are not sitting in the pen where we picked them up, starving. We truly gave them the Last Act of Kindness.

Tawnee evaluated the horses from the clinic yesterday, all of them had a poor quality of life, and it was the kindest thing to do to let them pass away peacefully. While Tawnee was at the vet Channel 12 in Chico was heading out to the rescue to do a story on us. We had no idea they were coming until they cold called us this morning, but when media wants to come, it's usually a good idea to get the maximum exposure for horses in need possible. Tawnee got the call that she had to get back to the rescue ASAP, so she gave her final goodbye to the horses and headed back.

After only getting lost once the news crew arrived and started setting up.

Tawnee was the first person to be interviewed, their focus in the interview was the clinic yesterday. Tawnee is getting pretty used to interviewing over the last couple days. When news crews would come to different things over the years, it used to scare Tawnee to death to talk in front of the camera. After today and all the recent media, she says she's not nervous at all. Do something often enough and long enough and you can get used to it.

Then it was Jason's turn to talk about how the economy is so affecting horse owners all over the state.

Then it was the horses turn. They were all so curious about what was happening. The treats hidden in the reporters hand really helped out the curiosity too.

The horses were just so amazed and just couldn't figure out what these folks were up to.

The horses just had to make sure their face were seen on TV. It made it a little difficult for filming as the horses all wanted to show off their fancy noses on the camera lens.

It is so neat to see actual footage on TV at the rescue, you can watch the TV news clip by clicking here.

The AppealDemocrat ran a good article on us today, you can view it by clicking here.


The Oroville & Chico Mercury Register also ran articles on us. Click here.

And, for the last media mention of the day, thank you Cathy from Fugly Horse of the Day blog for putting us front and center once again. It is a call for other rescues to step up and follow our leadership and have euthanasia clinics of their own for horses that need to be put to sleep gently, the lame, old and suffering horses. Click here for the blog post.

Brianna came out today and did some office work, she got some emails written and phone calls were answered. Thanks for coming out! She's heading out for Thanksgiving vacation and will be gone until December. Claire is planning on stepping in to do emails and phone calls as a backup.