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Did you know that each year just in Texas law enforcement agencies remove hundreds of horses from abusive or negligent homes? Once they're removed, though, these horses often have no place to go. That's where we step in: placing these horses into foster homes, rehabilitating and retraining them, and finding them loving adopters.
Reina is a perfect example of our work. Although she's now a gorgeous horse, she was starving when she arrived. Once healthy, she spent four months being ridden by a volunteer until she was adopted by a family. She's now the beloved pet, friend, and riding partner for a teenage girl. Not only did we save Reina's life, but now Reina is teaching her young rider about hard work, responsibility, and how to make the world a better place.
We don't just help horses. We know that sometimes their owners can use a little help, too, so we provide low-cost gelding and free hay, grain, and other necessities to owners who are going through a temporary financial crisis. We don't want anyone to give up their beloved pets and friends due to a temporary crisis.
We rescue, rehabilitate, retrain, and rehome formerly abused, neglected, and unwanted horses. We work with law enforcement and animal control officers across the state of Texas to investigate reports of neglected, abused, and abandoned horses. We help educate owners so that they can take better care of their horses when possible, and we help officers remove horses when needed. We then rehabilitate the horses, get them the training they need to be riding horses, and find them loving homes.
In order to help more horses, we also created programs to help their owners. We provide veterinary care, feed, and hay to horse owners who are suffering a temporary financial hardship so that they can keep their beloved horses. We also provide low-cost gelding (neutering) which makes male horses easier to handle, house, and train, and also reduces indiscriminate breeding. We also pay for euthanasia for horses who are suffering from injuries or illnesses and whose owners cannot afford the procedure.
Unfortunately many people get horses without the knowledge or desire to care for them properly. So each year, hundreds of horses in Texas are starved, abused, or even abandoned. Removing horses from these homes, rehabilitating and housing them, and then finding them new homes takes both time and money, and often county and city animal control budgets do not provide enough funds to care for needy horses. This is where we come in: we help law enforcement and animal control agencies investigate reports of neglect or abuse, and then pick up starved, abused, or abandoned horses. We can provide housing and rehabilitation, and we have the network and experience to find these horses new loving homes. We provide these services without charging the counties or cities we help, so their animal control budgets are able to go further.
Our mission is to improve the lives of equines by educating and helping owners, assisting law enforcement agencies, rehabilitating abused and neglected equines, and placing them into safe, permanent homes.
We envision a world where no horse needs to be rescued.
Recently we were asked to take in a large group of horses from a city animal shelter. These horses were discovered to be emaciated, many with untreated injuries. Animal control was able to remove them from their owners, but housing, rehabilitating, and rehoming them was a big job. The shelter reached out to us, and we jumped in to help.
First, we had all horses seen by a veterinarian and began treating their injuries. We are moving them into foster homes and starting them on a refeeding program to help them gain weight. Some of the horses are scared of people (probably because they were handled badly or not handled much at all), and those horses are going to foster homes who will work to gain their trust. When the horses are healthy, they'll get the training they need to be riding horses and will find loving homes. And then our foster homes will be ready to help another set of needy horses.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we feared that many horse owners would struggle to provide for their horses because of job loss, reduction in income, medical bills, etc. We did not want those owners to give up their horses because of a temporary problem, and we didn't want our foster homes to be so full of horses whose owners surrendered them that we couldn't help critical neglect cases. We decided to create the Horse Owners Assistance Program. Owners were able to apply and receive help with veterinary bills or with hay and grain. We were able to keep many horses with their owners, and this year we've expanded this program to help owners suffering any kind of temporary financial hardship: divorce, job loss, death in the family, medical bills, etc.
We are able to measure sucess with how many horses we take in, how many horses we place with adopters, and how many owners we help through our owner assistance programs.
2020 saw our most successful adoption year ever, so we know we're on the right track in getting horses rehabilitated, retrained, and rehomed. 2020 was only our first year offering our Horse Owners Assistance program, but we feel that any horses we are able to keep with their owners are a success.
We were founded by a group of about 25 horse lovers who wanted to help starving, abused, and neglected horses and knew we could do it better than the existing horse rescues.
Left: Bluebonnet Equine Humane Society Executive Director and Co-founder, Dr. Jennifer Williams, on her adopted horse Galeno. Jennifer has helped rehabilitate and retrain many of Bluebonnet's horses. She's currently fostering five Bluebonnet horses and has six adopted horses in her barn, including her "equine soul mate" Galeno.
Would you give $4 a month to support four nonprofits that are making a big difference? Join forces with other 52andChangmakers to automatically give to every Cause of the Week. Every Monday, you’ll wake up knowing you’ve already made a difference! As our community grows, so does the impact!
Together we’ve become volunteers in places we would have never expected, planted milkweed for butterflies, provided books to kids in need, helped save endangered turtles, helped turn excess food into nutrition, helped bring art to youth, educated one another about how we are connected to our delicate food systems, helped save abandoned horses and given old dogs new hope, watched foster youth shine in the spotlight of movie making, helped clean tires out of rivers… we could go on and on and on. It is an absolute joy to be a part of such an amazing network of humans making a difference.
“ALMA reconnects the lives of the formerly incarcerated back to the fabric of society. Our participants have the chance at attaining gainful employment and becoming self-sufficient. Urban Farming helps everyone involved explore the relationships between plants, animals and humans as a way of creating a profound connection to both nature and their community.” - ALMA Backyard Farms
While we’re writing this and you’re reading it, Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes is out there, finding ways to provide food to more people in need throughout Santa Cruz County, where one of three residents are reported to be food insecure.
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