At HFH they see all kinds of horses with all kinds of injuries. Certainly all of the horse standards: leg, bite and hoof injuries as well as a range of sores, lice, worms and complex dermatitis. All the things that horse owners generally see and treat.
One difference is that the severity of these injuries is usually greater and they frequently have been left untreated for a very long time. So simple leg injuries come in as deep tendon sheath infections requiring months of antibiotics and bandaging. Its all part of a day in the life of the rescue.

Once in a while they get horses with extreme or unusual problems. Like a hoof growing out of a pastern or a completely eviscerated forehead or a congenital maxillary sinus tumor in a 10 year old horse or a shattered hock in a mini horse. Some of these problems take years, many surgeries and many thousands of dollars to resolve. HFH believes that once a horse gets in the door it is their responsibility to fix it if at all possible, regardless of time or money. Of course usually lack of money increases time but as long as the horse is willing they will not give up.

Over the next few weeks I will try and document these unusual injuries as a resource for others encountering similar problems. Check back here on a weekly basis for any updates or new stories

Look for articles about the following conditions:
⁃ Injury from a trailer accident confused with brucellosis (Windy)
⁃ Maxillary sinus cyst resection, flushing and magical resolution (Isabella)
⁃ Paraphimosis due to starvation and injury, updated treatment protocol and long term solutions (Oscar, Bobbie, Kelsey)
⁃ Untreated tendon sheath infection (Josie)
⁃ Displaced hoof coronet section with multiple unsuccessful surgeries (Haley)
⁃ Refeeding syndrome in a pregnant mare (Faith)
⁃ Intractable lice in a large population of starving horses (Anita Miller)
⁃ Severe hoof deformities due to long term confinement on an uneven floor (Jonah)
⁃ Brood mare with a broken pelvis and lacerated vulva (Angel)
⁃ Unresolvable soft tissue breakdown in the hind legs (Pete)
⁃ Seizures in an elderly horse (Dahlia)
⁃ Full coffin bone rotation (Humphrey, Brass)
⁃ Damaged eyes and the enucleation of the eye decision (Chance, Diva)
⁃ EPSM and a starving horse (Uma)
⁃ Feeding ramp up causes bone spavins (Eli)
⁃ Shattered hock in a mini horse (Rowdy)



JM

Is it really so bad

It's the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and I reread my turkey day post and I have to laugh at myself. Tryptophan can make you do strange things.

On some levels though things really are bad for horse rescues. We are all full. Horses in need go to the auction and from there to Canada for slaughter. Of the 5 counties we used to deal with 3 are effectively out of the horse impound and rescue business. One is even closing down animal control all together. Horses die in the fields or are dropped off in the national forests to forage for themselves.

Horses that go to auction are being sold for $65 to kill buyers.

But things are slowly changing. Prices for hay and grain are down. Old fosters who couldn't afford to keep our horses are returning. New fosters are showing up and the best news of all is that we are slowly starting to adopt out horses.

The T-day post was about an impound of 15 horses. One died of old age. 9 have been adopted, 2 are at foster homes and 3 are still here with us at our intake barn.

It's coming on 2 years now. During that time we did squeeze in 2 more equines (mini and hinny) but effectively things were closed to incoming traffic. Now we are slowly opening up new capacity at the same time that animal control is withdrawing from the horse seizure business.

It's hard to say then where things go from here. The need has never been greater but the structure of the horse rescue business has been completely turned on it's head. 2 years ago there were 10 identifiable horse rescues in Western Washington State. now there are over 30. Where before people would drive by and shake their heads or at best complain to animal control now a few are actually organizing to save at least a few of the hundreds of unwanted and neglected horses in this area. Government withdraws and people step forward. Maybe things aren't so bad.

For us the question is an old one. How do we really make a difference. Caring for a few horses makes a big difference to them but it does nothing for the underlying problem of horses and people in America.

The last 2 years have been a time of great churn. But we are still here. All of this tumult has given us a different perspective. Both broader and deeper. Primarily though it has given us time, time to think about the bigger picture, time to build an extraordinary force of volunteers, time to solidify a real board of directors, time to plan and work on many new levels.

Stay tuned, the best is yet to come.

.

They hate because they can

Its Thanksgiving 2009. So many volunteers came out today, brought their families, scratched the horses. said very nice things about the work we do. It gave me a few idle hours and I floated between thankfulness at how well all the horses are doing and melancholy for the struggle the last 2 years have been. So I wrote about a piece of it. Originally I had names and dates and specifics but I realized that the individuals don't matter. This is a summary of a bigger story. The long version is being written but there is an essential sub-element that may be of generic value to those who think about people and horses and coming together to help them, or not.

What happened to us is not all that unusual. What surprised us was how disconnected from reality and how mean spirited it all ended up becoming.

Even now we find it hard to believe but there are people out there who hate us. We are one of many horse rescues in the Pacific Northwest. We deal almost exclusively with horses impounded by animal control agencies. You would think that good intentions would count for something. Not in this case.

There’s a woman who initially did a good thing and fostered two seized horses for animal control. Her almost immediate demands that the horses then be given to her (starting just 4 days later/before the defendant was even charged/while the seized horses still belonged to the defendant) caused a cascade of actions, reactions and mistakes that continue even now 2 years later. She blames us.

There’s a vet who tried to treat one of the horses with a bloody, paralyzed penis. The injury was already several weeks old in a situation where hours and days matter. She didn’t succeed. We had more time so we did a little better but not completely. She blames us.

When animal control (at the order of their boss) took the horses (a stallion and a colt) away from the demanding foster home, with a goal of collecting all the horses (evidence) into one location, we ended up caring for his injury and their bodies. Everybody blamed us.

The demanding foster threatened to sue the county and the county caved in. She got the horses back. We returned them nearly healed, healthy and bright eyed but still skinny. Everybody blamed us for everything and by now everybody also hates us.

Our group has pushed for animal control to pay rescues at least part of the cost of transporting , rehabilitating and adopting out these sorts of seized horses. There’s a man who likes to go to county council meetings who says as a private charitable agency we should do it for free and that we are a bad bunch for taking any county money. He hates us.

Some of these people are working with and being advised by a lawyer who lost a case where his client starved one mini horse to death and left 9 others out in a muddy field without shelter, food or water. It was one of his first cases. It didn’t go very well. His client pled guilty to 2 felony and 7 misdemeanor counts. She tried for 2 years to get the horses back so during that time we could not adopt them out. The court ordered that she pay us during those 2 years to care for the horses that she couldn't manage to feed in the first place. The lawyer hates us.

There’s a community activist that agitates for change, agitates for the efficient use of in-county resources and agitated to kick us out because we’re an out of county agency. It seems that from her perspective everybody is incompetent and needs to do as she says. I think ultimately she just hates everybody, but now, 2 years later less than 5 horses have been rescued by this county and most were sent to out of county agencies even though these people had pushed for the establishment of an in county equine rescue network. She of course hates us in particular.

This is like a case study in hate. A study in people who want to tell other people what to do. A study in people who judge other people. It’s also a study in an animal control agency paralyzed by the vitriol of a few initially well meaning but ultimately misinformed people who have gone sour. People who use hate as their justification. Primarily it's a study in wasted opportunities, other horses left to die and bad feelings all around.

Over time we have come to understand that that it is common for animal oriented charitable organizations across the country to encounter disgruntled donors, volunteers, board members, activists, adopters or just bystanders who have very specific expectations that may not be precisely met. They take these feelings as a license to tear down all the efforts of these organizations. It’s so destructive and so unnecessary. It shines a light not on the inevitable and correctable mistakes of rescues but on the very worst inside these people who hate. In our case it stole time and focus and money and enthusiasm from those of us who would try and the horses we would wish to save. In the case of the county it gave them the justification to do nothing.

Being constructive is hard. Finding out the truth is hard. Working together to make things better is hard. It didn’t happen in this case. So many unhappy people. They complained, they pointed fingers, they threatened, they maligned, they pushed us out of their county. It’s their ball game now. So how are things working out so far?



.

Who is the founder?

In any organization (fraternal, commercial, nonprofit etc.) there is always a starting point and frequently a single person who deserves credit for "the idea". With Hope For Horses that person was a veterinarian from Monroe Washington named Dana Bridges. From this beginning Dana reached out to other people to help her make her idea for a horse rescue real. My nomenclature says that the person with the idea is "The Founder" and those that were brought in at the very beginning and actually labored to make the organization happen are founding members of the organization or "Co-founders". This seems trivial but it's important in recognizing those who were there at the beginning working to make a non-existent thing real.

Jenny Edwards was one of the first people that Dana brought the idea to and who she asked for help. Jenny had experience in creating and operating a non-profit organization. She was also a member of a number of local (Social Venture Partners) and national (Council on Foundations) non-profit support organizations that provided assistance for this kind of startup.

It was on Jenny and John Edwards' back porch in the spring of 2001 that Dana (at that time their horse vet and their friend) defined her vision for Hope For Horses. Jenny helped her with the nuts and bolts of creating the new organization and would have been an active member the board of directors when the group was incorporated. The actual organization and incorporation of the group occurred over the fall of 2001 and early 2002. Jenny attended these meetings and it was assumed she would be on the founding board of directors (attachment).

Fate intervened and in June of 2001 Jenny was diagnosed with Stage 2B Ductal Carcinoma. It was a combination platter with many of the worst options that Breast Cancer can provide (ER/PR positive, HER2 gene, Invasive not DCIS) . Amazingly there was no lymph node involvement but finding that out caused her left arm to be permanently affected. It took 8 months of surgery, chemo and radiation and 5 years of Femara to get statistics on her side. Jenny continued her involvement in the formation of Hope For Horses through surgery and chemotherapy but the radiation treatments in February of 2002 caused her to withdraw from HFH.
I wrote this section about my wife. She rarely talks about her cancer except to someone else in a similar situation. This is not a ploy for sympathy but a statement of pride - my pride in her for surviving this trial and coming out the other side a better, stronger and more determined person.

By the summer of 2003, her hair still short, Jenny had begun to feel human. Dana called her again to ask for help, things were not going well at Hope For Horses. Two boards of directors had resigned in a disagreement with Dana over the direction and operation of HFH. This should not inherently be viewed pejoratively toward Dana. Non-profits regularly go through startup twists and turns trying to find their way and decide what they should actually do. HFH was certainly doing that.

Jenny jumped in with both feet. 2 years of looking inward and fighting cancer poured out as she worked to rebuild HFH. Within 6 months Dana finally decided that her original vision was not going to be sustained at HFH and she left the group for good. Jenny became Executive director and started turning HFH into the professional Horse Rescue that it is today.

Now there is some disagreement about what constitutes a Founder of HFH. Jenny considers herself a co-founder of HFH because of her efforts at starting up the group in 2001. A more precise way to put it is that she is "one of the founders" of the group. This does not detract or diminish the importance of Dana Bridges to the creation of HFH and her role as "The Founder".

I look at it differently. Jenny came back to HFH in 2003 to find a dysfunctional organization. She was personally responsible for reconstituting the group, starting with a transitional board of directors that has led to the extraordinary cast of characters that serve and guide HFH today. She redirected HFH to focus on neglected, abandoned and abused horses that had been seized by animal control agencies. She became the first representative of a rescue group to join the Washington Animal Control Association board of directors and gained the AC certification granted by the Washington State Criminal Justice Commission after attending the their law enforcement academy. This made HFH a much more knowledgeable partner in focusing animal control agencies on the needs of horses. She also developed a course on equine cruelty investigation and has taught over 80 ACO's from across the region.

Hope For Horses as it now exists is radically different from when it was first conceived. It represents the culmination of 6 years of Jenny's guidance. She is now the only person who has been with HFH from the beginning. From a number of perspectives it's appropriate to call Jenny Edwards one of the founders of Hope For Horses.

Sanity in Numbers

It is now March of 2009. This posting was written 8 months ago. Since then things got worse and costs were even higher than enumerated here. Now as the recession progresses, prices are slowly returning and may even go lower. So use this as a description of the elements involved in defining the cost of horses care and the numbers as a snapshot of what it once was.

There are a number of people out there that object strongly and noisily to a horse rescue getting reimbursed for the care of seized horses when animal control has served a warrant and the animals are being cared for prior to final legal action or forfeiture by the abuser/owners. I don't get this when you consider the large amount of money spent on dog and cat shelters. Maybe its just that all tax money spent is bad, maybe it's that someone else gets it when these people believe that they deserve it more, who knows.

A number of uninformed people use terms like "triple dipping" which I take to mean that a rescue gets payments from Animal Control, receives donated cash or goods as a charity and charges a fee for adopting out horses. This of course is what every dog and cat shelter does but the idea of a horse rescue doing it seems to irk some people.

I'll use March and April 2008 at Hope For Horses (HopeForHorses.net) as examples. They have been very aggressive in defining fee schedules and getting contracts in place that ensure that at least some of the cost of picking up and rehabilitating abused horses are covered. The goal is a sustainable model for a horse rescue. The history of all rescues and humane societies is full of groups that start strong with high ideals and then go bust because they can't pay for the animals they take and don't move them out to adopters fast enough. Euthanasia then becomes as much a business decision as a moral one.

During this time HFH had 6 horses at their main intake barn, 15 at a contracted boarding facility (NSAE barn) which were part of a criminal impound from Pierce County Animal Control, 14 were in foster care. Please note that these are rough approximations designed to give you a general idea of the costs involved.

Ok so here are some basics:

1. A typical, healthy 1000 pound horse requires 20-30 pounds of food a day. Each is different (easy vs hard keepers) but it's a good generalization. The high end is for active, in use horses and the low end is for lazy or recovering horses that mostly stand around all day.
2. This is dry weight and again in a very general sense means hay, alfalfa, grain or pelleted, concentrated feeds.
   
3. At Hope for Horses a typical daily ration (Fed in 5 stages) is 6 lbs of Senior feed (LMF or Nutrina), Horse guard vitamins, 2 cups of wheat bran, 1 cup of soybean oil and 3 flakes of Orchard grass hay. Total of about 22 pounds. Again every horse is different (less if just beginning the refeeding process, more if actively gaining weight, less if nearing their plateau weight) Many horses get joint supplements or other diets that require less chewing, but this is generally typical.
4. At todays prices: hay is $300/ton, senior feed is $18/bag, oil is $29/6 gal. This means a raw cost of $5.50/day just for food. With horses we see waste either in spilled grain or trampled hay of around 10% so we generally feed more hay than intended. So broadly it costs $6.00/day just to feed a horse. There are also episodic charges for worming ($10/horse every 2 months) and grooming supplies - every horse has their own brushes. combs, hoof picks plus misc expensive goo that is sprayed or lathered on them.
   
5. One other definable cost is bedding, either sawdust, shavings or pelleted (like stove pellets). This again is an estimate across a number of horses. For instance at the intake barn we purchase 24 Cubic Yard truckloads of mixed sawdust/shavings to bed 7 horses for 2 1/2 months. Currently that costs $420/load or around $.70/day/horse. Pelleted bedding used at the NSAE barn was 2-4 bags/day for 15 horses. At $4.25/bag that is around $.85/day/horse.
6. So food and bedding is around $7.00/day/horse. Pretty much a fixed cost. Many individual horses require extra care (supplements or meds) and that can add as much as $2-$6/day/horse.
7. During march HFH was responsible for Vet and farrier care for 20 horses (6 at the intake barn and 14 at fosters) . The average for all of 2007 was $130/month/horse for vet and farrier. The other 15 at the NSAE barn had vet and farrier billed directly to Pierce County.
   
8. Generally rescued horses are kept at private barns where no boarding fee is charged. This doesn't mean no additional cost just no additional charges. In the case of Hope for Horses and the Donna Gale case they boarded(stall, turn out only) 15 horses at the NSAE facility for $3.00/day/mare and gelding and $5.00/day/stallion. There were also charges for damage to the stallion's stalls.
   
9. Now Hope For Horses in spite of being called a "non-profit" is still a business. There are phones and DSL and printer and office supplies and gas. In March they had 1 1/2 paid staffers (better than minimum wage but just barely) who answered phones, managed the web site, scheduled volunteers, worked with fosters, made site visits (mileage charges) to check out new adopters and fosters.
10. During this time there were 2 horses in training (being started under saddle) but no training fees. At other times it is not unusual to pay professional trainers $300-$600/young unstarted horse to get them ridable. We did ground manners work in March with the Pierce County horses but no more until we knew we would actually take possession of them. There is always a possibility they might be returned to the abuser.
    
11. During March 2008 HFH had a total of 35 horses in direct or foster care. 21 horses were being cared for directly (HFH and volunteers). 14 were in foster care.
    
12. So approximately, it cost us $340/month/horse to care for the 6 horses at our intake barn (food,bedding, vet, farrier no stall charges). $310/month/horse For the 15 Pierce County horses at the NSAE barn (Food, bedding, stall, no vet or farrier) and for 14 fostered horses it was $130/month/horse. This doesn't include costs for a couple of very hard to keep older and EPSM horses that were at fosters but for which we paid for food and bedding.
13. So for March 2008 the 35 horses in their care cost HFH approximately $9000. This is real money paid out, donated or purchased goods consumed and services applied directly to horses.
14. Money came in from a number of sources. $4875 was paid by Pierce County directly to HFH for the Donna Gale 15. $1400 was goods purchased and donated to HFH at Bothell Feed and Dayville Hay. NSAE Bedding was all donated by the Grange. No horses were adopted out. That leaves $2300 that HFH covered out of it's general fund.
15. Now April was completely different. The Donna Gale horses were forfeited, 13 were turned over to us, 2 were given away by the County but all payments stopped at the beginning of April. We did adopt out 1 of the 13 for $1000. and one died at the fosters. We still had $1400 of donated feedstore goods and the donated pelleted bedding. That leaves 31 horses that HFH had to come up with approximately $6000 out of its general fund

Notice that this is not a fully burdened cost. All of the office expenses and salary's are not included. Operating expenses are also not included. HFH tries to reimburse real expenses of its volunteers and employees. As an example the donated pelleted bedding cost over $400 in gas and trailer rental even with a donated truck.

It also does not include L&I expenses. HFH tracks volunteer hours and pays insurance. In 2007 we logged 5000 hours donated by 52 people.

The net of all this is that even though HFH got paid by Pierce County and got some very large donations at the feed stores and was paid for the adopted horse there was no excess money. HFH is a charity. They do amazing things with very little money. Bringing a starving, sick and depressed horse back from near death and doing it for a little more than 400/month is amazing.

Some extremely ignorant and selfish people just can't add. But again it doesn't matter. HFH and all other rescues are full, the next large group of starving horses will have no where to go.

A Long Strange Trip

On Wednesday April 2nd 2008 Hope For Horses, a horse rescue in Woodinville Wa transferred this stallion to the veterinary offices of Linda Hagerman for a vet check. He was being turned over to Rose Corey to avoid a potential lawsuit with Pierce County.

This photo was taken about 10 minutes before a commercial horse transporter picked him up. He loaded easily, trailered well and unloaded easily.









On Wednesday April 9 2008 the Dispatch News, a small weekly paper in Pierce County printed this article that began with this picture. The article says it was taken on April 3rd 2008, the day after the first picture and just hours after the article says he had an almost catastrophic medical emergency while being transported by Corey from the vet to her farm.

The article states that after the vet check, on the way to Rose Corey's farm the stallion choked, went into convulsions and required emergency treatment. The suggested cause was "a handful of loose hay". The article has many errors in fact and incorrectly leaves the impression that Hope For Horses might be responsible.


Here he is a week before being sent to Corey The difference in the two pictures at HFH and the picture in the article is shocking. How can a horse go from healthy and active to bony and thin in one day? An uninformed guess might be that this is a horse that is severely dehydrated because of the choking incident while being trailered by Corey. My photographer friend tells me it's primarily lighting and angles. I have no idea! The problem is that the picture was used to accuse HFH of mishandling the stallion.

This horse was in the care of Corey from Dec 31 to Jan 20 when Pierce County transfered him to Hope For Horses. He is one of 15 horses alledgedly neglected and starved by Donna and Lisa Gale in Spanaway Washington. Hope For Horses was responsible for his overall health and recovery.

This is a gradual process that can take much longer than the 2 1/2 months that he was in their care. He was very thin when he came in to HFH and he was gaining weight slowly. He was still thin when he left but even so he was an extremely healthy and very active stallion.

Here is a list of related links for those who can't get enough

Original Youtube Video === News Report after Impound
Negative News Article === Rebuttal News Article
A few choice photos

Sadly there was another horse involved.

This little guy was removed from the field at the same time as the stallion You can see them both in the YouTube video. The words used were that he was "deformed". That deformity appears to be garden variety cow hocks that were made worse by the muddy conditions and the colts and his mothers poor nutrition.

He too was originally sent to Rose Corey and cared for from Dec 31 07 to Jan 19 08. He came back at the same time as the stallion and was reunited with his mother. Amazingly they rebonded, she started producing a little milk and he started nursing again.

As HFH suspected the deformity was just early growth problems that are slowly sorting themselves out as he gets stronger and plays with another weanling/yearling filly from the same group. All three get turned out together.




Rose Corey however wanted him transported to her "Immediately". HFH asked the county to give him some more time to mature and get stronger in familiar surroundings with his mother and then let them do a gradual weaning in adjacent stalls and turnouts. Maybe 2 months total

You would think they were the devil himself. She went ballistic. Her lawyer (G Paul Mabry who defended the convicted abuser Anita Miller) worked overtime accusing Hope For Horses of deliberately stalling. HFH cannot stop the transfer, he belongs to the county. They just want him in the best shape possible and after what happened with the stallion HFH documented like crazy people.



The ultimate transfer of this little guy resulted in this article: 3rd Dispatchnews article

The tragedy of all this is the waste of precious time. Hope For Horses has 35 horses in their care. they are fully occupied. Yet days have been taken up dealing with the nasty accusations, untruthful newspaper articles, drafting replies etc.. All things that take away from horses that need their attention. Even now they still don't know what motivates these people.

In the end though it all may not matter. HFH and all other rescues are full. Fosters and adopters are fewer due to the incredible price increases in hay, grain and bedding. Pierce County is close to broke so Animal Control has less money just when they need much more. Good luck to us all in the coming months.


www.Hope For Horses.net is where you can go to offer your support. They need it more than ever right now.