Tag Archives: horse rescue

November 25, 2012 · 6:45 am

Save Another Horse; Buy A 2013 Calendar

Raise money to save horses from slaughter and get this beautiful calendar.

Rescue a horse without leaving your office or couch.  Buy another calendar this year and help save hundreds of horses from slaughter.

Last year, horse lovers around the world raised $40,000 just by buying calendars.  Let’s do it again, this year.  Let’s save more horses and make a difference in the lives of these wonderful, spiritual animals.

What could be easier?  I asked that question last year…and I’m asking it again this year.

For $19.95, you will get a beautiful calendar and gift and a horse may just get a second chance at life.

Buy one special calendar and you might be able to help save one of the thousands of healthy, lovely and loving American horses that are slaughtered every year.

Offered by Hoofprints.com, the calendar is the result of a group of horse lovers watching horses going to an auction house and deciding to make a difference.   They created a calendar featuring some of the horses they met.

Printed on heavy stock, the photography is exceptional and even more so because of the conditions under which the horses are being held and the pictures are taken.

As with last year’s calendar, each month features another beautiful horse, photographed by well-known professional photographer Sarah K. Andrew.  Every month you meet another horse whose life path should have taken it to fields of clover and sunshine on its back. The horses, thoroughbreds, Appaloosa’s, paints, chestnuts and Belgian, colts, mares, geldings and stallions, are magnificent, proud, standing tall.

Here’s the good bit.  The profits — all of them — are donated to a dedicated fund with One Horse At a Time, Inc.  Money from the sale of these calendars goes to rescue horses — period.

The calendars are available at Hoofprints and only cost  $19.95.  And they make great gifts for anyone who loves horses or just loves animals.

For each of these horses and countless others, the end of their lives is not going to be spent in a warm, sunny field in a forever home.  It will end with a trip to feedlots like Camelot in the middle of New Jersey and a swift trip to Canada or Mexico where horses go to die.  Many of the horses know they are no longer home but they don’t understand what is happening.

The horse lovers who created this calendar understand and are not standing around, watching. They act.

Sarah K. Andrew makes time to photograph every horse sold to the feedlot. Volunteers evaluate the horses the best they can and a large network of horse people distribute photos and descriptions of the horses, from Facebook to feed stores.They work with the owner of the auction to resell the horses who didn’t get a high enough bid to leave the sale.

Since the effort began in November 2009, no horses have shipped to slaughter from the auction house, and well over 2,000 horses have been purchased and re-homed out of just one feedlot.

I can’t buy another horse.  But I can buy a calendar or two.  And so can you.

Please act.  Please help save these horses whose only mistake was being sold by someone who used to love them.

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Filed under Death & Dying, Equestrian Articles, Life & Death, Mid-Atlantic Horse Stories, World Changing Ideas, Writing About Horses

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March 16, 2010 · 10:59 am

Gray Dapple Thoroughbreds Rescued by Actress and Former A Circuit Rider

Anyone who owns horses knows just how much the current economic downturn hurts. In fact, The Unwanted Horse Coalition conducted a survey to find out just how deep this issue runs and learned that the recession is hitting horse owners hard; it is also hitting horse rescues hard.

Up until a few months ago, acclaimed Hollywood actor and Broadway star, Paul Sorvino was able to fund one Pennsylvania-based horse rescue pretty much singlehandedly. That’s because Gray Dapple, which currently has 18 horses in care, is run by his daughter, Amanda Sorvino.

But the recession has cut her father’s ability to cover all the costs. “At the ranch, Dad wrote the checks and I brought in horses and we had a staff – a barn manager and my boyfriend and me. It was a family operation,” says Amanda Sorvino.

It is still a family operation but funding is tight.  Some people think because she is the daughter of a famous actor, Amanda’s rescue doesn’t need donations. But with 18 horses in care right now and more sure to turn up, Amanda says costs are going up because of the kind of horses she rescues.

“Some horses are not going to be adoptable. They are young but they are lame, injured. We tend to have horses that have special needs. And some will never leave my rescue.”

An A Circuit rider in her childhood, Amanda got into the rescue business because of one horse – Pastel. “…probably the most beautiful horse I have ever seen. But Pastel was not going to make it in the circuit,” Amanda pauses to collect herself. “We purchased another horse for me. We kept Pastel for awhile but she was just forgotten. I never really knew what happened to her. I looked for her for years but never did find her.”

Pastel inspired the name for her rescue – graydapple.org – but New Holland was what really got Amanda started on the path to rescue. “I have been rescuing for more than 4 years, after my first visit to New Holland. I was shocked that a kill buyer could buy show horses and ship them to slaughter.”

Rescuing horses also led Amanda to begin finding, investigating and exposing illegal slaughterhouses in the mid-Atlantic region. “I grew up in an actor’s family and on movie sets. A lot of life is acting so when I went undercover to investigate the Bravo operation, – I was playing a role. I never had any fear while I was doing this.”

But Amanda has paid for her activism, receiving death threats and unable to disclose where her rescued horses are being kept. “Because of all my undercover work, I don’t like to give the location out. I have exposed so many kill buyers and there have been threats made,” explains Amanda. “The horses are now in three boarding operations.”

Amanda relies on volunteers to help her recover, rehabilitate, retrain and adopt out the horses she rescues and like other rescue operations, she is always looking for funding. “Because we are boarding all the horses right now, we need to get something back for all of the money we put out when we rescue and rehabilitate.”

She has horses available for adoption and uses fees to help defray costs but adopting one of her horses is not easy. “The application is really restrictive; we charge a non refundable adoption fee.” Once you adopt one of Amanda’s horses, you can’t, “…re-sell, give away or trade the horse. The horses come back to me.,” Sorvino laughs. “It’s not really a rescue. We are a rescue in spirit, a combined rescue and sanctuary.”

Even with adoption fees, there is never enough to cover costs. Amanda makes it easy for people to donate to her rescue, accepting checks, major credit cards and PayPal.

“When we rescue a horse from slaughter we make that horse a promise that life will be wonderful from her on in.”

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Filed under Equestrian Articles, Freelance Writing, Mid-Atlantic Horse Stories, Writing About Horses

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