Save a Horse: Rescue and Rehabilitate Mustangs

Dear Supporters, 

This past March, Meadow Ridge School from Alberta, Canada had 22 students and 2 teachers who stayed at WHRC for a project and educational week about America’s Wild Horses and the rescue centre. Thanks to their generous donations, WHRC was able to build a riding arena with the school group’s help. This new riding arena allowed us to be able to host clinics and fundraisers for the centre!

April has been a busy month at WHRC with three different fundraising events. It started with a 2-day clinic with gated horse specialist Michael. This clinic had 9 riders along with their horses who participated in both day’s activities and about a dozen auditors. It was a wonderfully knowledgeable weekend which helped the centre as a fundraiser. We also hosted a clinic with Taylor, an AQHA Professional Horseman on the last weekend in April. This too was very successful with 10 riders and a dozen auditors!

The weekend of April 22^nd we took part in a national event called Help a Horse Day which is part of ASPCA. This was an open house event, where people came out to our centre to meet our horses. This was also a major fundraiser as we had sponsors who had booths at the event. Over 100 visitors came to see the rescue and it was a very successful day for both visitors and volunteers. WHRC set up different stations for the visitors to watch and learn about what we do and why we do it. There was also different horse work, round pen and square pen demos during the day for people to watch some of our horses up for adoption. Another activity was hay waggon rides around our property that recently has been cleared from our palmettos and pine trees. The day ended with raffles and a silent auction!

The following day, April 23, we attended a Native American, Earth Day Festival in Daytona Beach, Florida. This was the fourth year that WHRC has participated at this Earth Day Event. We bring a tame mustang along with a booth. We give demos thought out the day and talk about America’s wild horses and how they come to our centre.

After several months being very busy with all the preparation and events, we are now turning our focus toworking with the horses and doing more riding in our new arena. As the summer is coming, we will also look into improving our sanctuary horses’ fencing, it is so important to finally build our catch pens. This will allow us to be able to handle our wild horses with a squeeze system.  

Warmest Regards,

Diane Delano
President of WHRC 

Dear Supporters, 

Today there is a heartbreaking dilemma over America’s wild horses that currently roam in the western United States. These horses are under the protection and decisions of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), who currently have over 45,000 wild horses in holding pens waiting to be adopted or placed in a long-term sanctuary. Less than 35,000 are left in the wild.

There are programs designed to assist the BLM with the adoption and care of wild horses; our centre is one of these programs.During 2016, we took in 12 wild horses and 7 wild burros from the BLM’s holding facilities.

We run a training program that focuses on working with these animals, building their trust and confidence and making them able to be handled, groomed, worked on by a Ferrier, tied, and load into a trailer. All of these behaviours are necessary so they can be adopted. We are proud to say that all were successfully adopted in 2016.

WHRC’s president, Diane, is an approved Trainer Incentive Program (TIP) trainer. As a TIP trainer, you teach the wild horse to trust and also to lead, tie and pick up all four hooves. The first interaction with humans is vitally important for future adoption. If the horse feels comfortable from the beginning of the training it is more likely to be adopted into a good home. With this program, the TIP trainer’s goal is to reduce the number of abused horses

Meet Alicia and Euphoria

During the last quarter of 2016 WHRC’s volunteer coordinator Alicia, has been working with a wild horse named Euphoria. Euphoria was captured from the wild when she was 10 months old. For six years she lived in a holding facility at the BLM. In October Euphoria came to WHRC. Alicia worked diligently with Euphoria and was not only able to gentle and train Euphoria but also on 3 February 2017 they competed at the TIP Challenge in Okeechobee, Florida.

All 16 trainers were assigned a wild horse or burro to train for 120 days. In the competition, you competed in a handling and condition class, an in-hand trail class and a freestyle class. This was Alicia’s first mustang that she gentled by herself! In the competition they took second place in the in-hand trail class, third place in both Condition Class and Free-Style, resulting in a Reserve Champion overall.

Euphoria is now up for adoption.

The event in Okeechobee in February also included a BLM Wild Horse and Burro Adoption. WHRC brought home two TIP horses and one TIP burro to train.

Plans for 2017

For the upcoming year, WHRC is hoping to continue with our training program and be able to take in more wild horses and burros. We would like to become a storefront for the Mustang Heritage/ BLM Trainer Incentive Program, where we would bring in 10-20 wild horses at a time and prepare them for adoption.

When the horses come in wild they are required to be in a 6-foot high fenced pen. Today our wild horse pens are built of pipe panels. WHRC would like to improve these pens by building the fences out of wood instead of the pipe panels. Wood fences are more permanent and will lower the cost of replacing fencing when needed. Wood also offers a more natural feel to the animals helping in their conditioning from wild to tame. Our goal would be to have ten 24x24 foot pens. Having these new pens will allow us to take in 10 wild horses every six months.

A donation towards WHRC will make it possible for us to give these mustangs and burros a great start on their new life in captivity.

With gratitude,
The Wild Horse Rescue Centre