Giving Thanks for You This Holiday Season
The following is from All About Equine Animal Rescue:
All About Equine Animal Rescue, Inc
As we reflect on our blessings this holiday season, we are especially grateful for you and everyone in our AAE community! Thank you for making a difference in the lives of horses-in-need.
Your belief in our mission, your generosity, and your compassion help bring hope, change, and love to horses who need it most. We couldn’t do it without you.
Your support enables impactful work such as:
- Rescuing horses from vulnerable and life-threatening situations,
- Providing veterinary services and other health care to rehabilitate rescued horses,
- Providing horses with feed, shelter, and other basic care needs for the 50-60 horses in our care while they wait to find their forever homes,
- Castrating colts and stallions so they have a better chance at a normal life in society,
- Providing education and learning opportunities to the horses to give them a brighter future, and
- Helping farm animals and other animals when needed.
You help make all of these things and more possible, and we are deeply grateful we have your support.
From all of us at AAE, we wish you a joyful Thanksgiving. We are truly thankful for you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
By Meredith Hodges
Instead, it’s healthier for him, both physically and mentally, to be active and maintained year-round. This does not mean you need to ride him three or four days a week throughout the winter. There are lots of other fun, diverse activities you can enjoy together that will adequately maintain his body condition while keeping him interested and happy.
Since most inclement weather produces slippery ground surfaces, if your equine is to be used extensively, it is important that he have appropriate shoes on his feet during the slippery seasons. On strictly muddy or slippery surfaces, tapping and drilling studs into his shoes can help immensely in giving him added traction. If cared for properly, you can remove these studs when you don’t need them. If you get snow in your area, you may want to go with Borium shoes and rim pads. The Borium shoes supply good traction, while the rim pads prevent snow from balling up in your equine’s feet. I also suggest using splint boots on all four of his legs. This will protect against injury and give him added support and protection of his fetlock joints. Riding on the treacherous winter ground CAREFULLY can actually enhance core strength and postural balance.
learn and practice without the added stress and anxiety of showing and other warm weather activities. But even if you want to forego the lessons, there are numerous stables that will rent the use of their indoor arenas for a nominal fee and there are places where you can trail ride through beautiful winter scenes.
Another great way to have fun with your equine is participating in winter games and holiday parades. Christmas is always a joyous time to bring your equine out of the barn. Consider decorating your equine, dressing up yourself and then riding or driving with friends and family in your local Christmas parade. This can be loads of fun!
Before considering gifts for your family and friends, spend time getting to know their likes and dislikes. It would be better to find out if they even have any interest in live animals and then get them an appropriate book or a video about their interest. If they do show an interest in live animals, plan to spend time together so you can introduce them to the right way to feed, interact and maintain live animals. This approach will provide you all with the warmth and affection that you deserve. With the onset of computers and so much technology, people forget that you can literally travel the world through books and videos. You can learn to communicate better and enjoy deeper relationships. This will greatly expend horizons and offer brighter futures for everyone. This is a much more appropriate way to offer a suitable gift. Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
So that prompted me to get really meticulous about what I did. That’s why I launched into what I did establishing the Loveland Longears Museum and Sculpture Park at Lucky Three Ranch as a 501 (c) 3. We had to develop a “mission statement” to make it legitimate. We did that to teach people, at risk-kids and younger children about the care, maintenance, handling and training of equines in general and not just mules…but, with the primary focus on mules. The focus being like that would ensure that my animals would be part of the 501 3 (c) 3 and would be guaranteed a place in the whole foundation. They would be taken care of!
I hear from people every day that tell me they can’t find good grass hay for their animals. Mules and donkeys, being desert animals have to have a very specific diet or they can easily become obese and then you have all sorts of problems and vert bills up the ying-yang, if they don’t just die. It is really easy to mess up that program. The people that have been with me have been here for more than 20 years. We all operate as a team and not by how many hours are put in. Rather, each day is gauged by the tasks needed to be performed and we do not call it a day until the list is completed each day. We all pitch in to help each other when one person has more to do than the others. Each person has their own specific job description, but we all pitch in together when it is time to do the hay during the hay season.
The two of us girls welcome the opportunity to get out of the office during hay season. The weather is always lovely and working together is a lot of just plain fun. Doing house and office work can get rather tedious when it is so repetitive each day throughout the year. We try to keep up morale by changing up the schedule every so often. There are a lot of things to do like answering the phone, answering peoples’ questions, taking orders, booking tours, distributing orders, keeping the book-keeping straight each day, making Social Media posts regularly, checking the websites connections, both the LTR website and the Jasper website, keeping up the inventory cards in the warehouse and updating all the records for the attorneys and accountants. We also celebrate birthdays 
with our fellow workers, including our remote graphics artist, videographers and with our JASPER MASCOT, Social Media and behind the scenes website help. It is important to keep a happy and enthusiastic crew!
One cannot make any assumptions about what should happen upon your death after you are gone. If you don’t do the things as meticulously as I have done, anything can happen and your animals will suffer. It is better to have it all clearly laid out and in such a way that your designated recipients will be fully aware of what they are signing up for. You will need a clearly stated document about the way YOU care for your equine, so the recipient will know exactly what to do with your animal when they inherit it (How to feed (hay and oats mixes, worming, minerals, exercise, maintenance in a dry lot with limited turnout, social time, training expectations, etc.). This is critical for health of your mules and donkeys. Otherwise, you animals may not be cared for as you desire. Your assets will be at the mercy of other people’s opinions and desires. People can be very selfish in this way. People often believe that you can just turnout in a pasture and that is good enough…NOT! Mules and donkeys are very susceptible to obesity that will usually follow with founder and other things like ringbone and side bones. Poor management is generally due to owner laziness and misinformation that is freely passed around. Beware of advertising and markets techniques. They are not necessarily based in the overall welfare for your equine. Beware of dehydrated cubes and pellets, different oils, minerals, amounts and types of grains, treats, etc. I did my “field” research with 32 equines over a period of 40 years.
