Sanctuary or Retirement?

During the last several months, Traveller’s Rest Equine Elders Sanctuary received increasingly frequent requests to take in horses that “need” a sanctuary setting due only to age, or minor unsoundness. These requests come from both private owners and horse welfarists who are having trouble finding permanent homes for such horses.

It seems like a good time, therefore, to re-run a short version of TREES acceptance policy. TREES almost always operates at maximum capacity. Maximum capacity is determined by a combination of financial status, farm size, and available manpower and may vary slightly depending on conditions. Further, because TREES takes in the horses most other places won’t accept – those of the elder set with one or more “special needs” - most often, the only way a space at the sanctuary becomes available is when euthanasia is judged, by caregivers and vets, to be the most humane option.

At that time, if the Sanctuary is able to take in another horse, priority is always given to those that are not receiving even basic care. In other words, the horses that are not receiving food or vet care necessary to maintain life, or those that are suffering pain due to untreated injury or ailment. These horses may be animals that have been abandoned, seized by Animal Control officials, or whose owners have encountered financial or physical hardships that make keeping a horse impossible. Intake functions as a sort of triage process to determine which horse is in the most immediate need.

If an owner or caregiver is ABLE to provide care for a horse, that horse is not deemed to be in immediate need. If a horse is in a well-run rescue barn, that horse is not deemed to be in immediate need. If a person “bailed” a horse and can care for him properly, but now wants to move him along just so he or she can “bail” another, that horse is not deemed to be in immediate need.

TREES is not a retirement farm. The Sanctuary was not built just to provide a leisure home for all horses of a certain age. It is intended as a place of safety for those (over a certain age) who may otherwise slip through the cracks. Please understand that these spaces are reserved for those horses who, literally, have no one else ABLE to care for them. If you’re ABLE….do it.

No Apologies Here.

The previous owner of one of our resident geldings is apparently uphappy that he received a visit from an Animal Control officer shortly after one of his horses was moved to TREES.

In seven years, TREES has asked law enforcement to look into only two situations.  For the most part, we feel owners respond better to advice concerning elder management than to any sort of "threat."  In addition, we don't want to have a reputation with local Animal Control officials as The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

However......when we take in a skinny lame horse, and when a sanctuary respresentative tells us she observed other thin horses on the property, we get concerned.  When a mutual acquaintence says the horse we accepted looked far worse when we got him than when she saw him only a few months before, the concern heightens.  And when, after being offered feeding advice, the owner himself tells us he "has no intention" of doing anything differently for the horse, that tips the cart. 

In this case, the advice was merely to change from a generic whole grain general livestock feed to any pelleted or extruded complete feed that could be softened for a dentally challenged senior.  No recommendations for a "top of the line" formula, just something that this particular horse could actually chew and digest to get some calories into him.

"I have no intention of getting a different feed for this one horse" was the wrong answer.  § 3.2-6570 of the Virginia Code states "A.  Any person who:............(ii) deprives any animal of necessary food, drink, shelter or emergency veterinary treatment;......is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor."  Knowingly giving an animal something he cannot eat seems to be depriving him of food necessary to his survival.

We understand that horse owners run into hard times and sometimes need to ask for help. We do not understand the declaration "I have no intention" of doing anything different.

No apologies here.