Our Program - What We Do

At Horsefriends, we have three goals in our program: Rescue, Rehabilitation and Education

Rescue

The primary goal of the organization is to rescue animals that have been either abused or neglected. This is the stated mission of the organization. The rescue has expanded to include animals whose owners can no longer care for them. We are also helping some of the larger burro rescue organizations.

Our initial three burros were rescued from a situation where they were neglected and abused. Two of our burros were rescued because their owner was seriously injured and could no longer take care of them.

Rehabilitation

The rehabilitation process includes both physical and emotional care. The first step in the process is to take care of the medical needs of the animal and provide them with adequate nutrition. The second step of the process is to work with the animals to retrain them.

The goals of this process are to have adoptable equines that are able to do the basic things required of domesticated equines, such as; wear a halter, tie, lead, be safe around humans, allow farriers and vets to work with them without sedation. In a younger animal this is the basic instruction that allows them to be trained further in the future. In other cases, it is a process of re-learning to trust humans. The process is tailored to the individual needs of each animal rescued.

Education

Part of the reason large animals end up in bad situations is because people do not understand the care required to take care of horses, donkeys and mules. We hope to help people understand proper care and handling of the animals. If people are more educated not only will they take better care of their own animals.

Since we work with a lot of burros, the second thing we've been doing is a lot of education about burros. The question we always hear is "what can they do?" We hope to show that burros are able to do most of the things horses do.