January 25th, 2010
Happy (belated!) New Year to everyone!
I apologize for the lack of updates recently, but we are hopefully back on track again and will post new stuff a little more regularly now. The end of the year is always really busy for us here are SAHR, as it is for everyone! Christmas, New Years, Holiday season stress... added to the already fun time of caring for all the horses during the rather harsh winter we have been having :P I, for one, am defiintely fed up with all the snow/ice/slush/mud/wind we have been dealing with out in Ault! Bring on the spring weather! Actually, can we just skip straight to summer, please??
On a sad note, we have had to say goodbye to 2 more of our long term resident horses over the last few months. First Chessa, our elderly Thoroughbred mare who we suspected was battling cancer, and then soon after was Caden, our big Clydesdale gelding with the injured leg. Both of them were getting rather old, but it was the other health issues they had that began to deteriorate and really effect their quality of life. It's always hard saying goodbye to any horse, but these 2 had been favorites around the barn for several years :(
Fortuantely, the rest of SAHR's horses are doing well, and are probably just as ready for spring as us humans are!
November 5th, 2009
At long last, SAHR has a facebook page! Please check us out there, and become a "fan". Our facebook page will be updated often with little notes about daily life at the rescue, as well as with fun photos and announcements about important events or new rescues.
August 31st, 2009
Things are busy as usual around here (actually, probably MORE busy than normal) as we try to make our way through our summer project to-do list.
SAHR was invited to attend the 20th year celebration and open house at Precious Memories Pet Cemetery and Crematory in Fort Collins (a wonderful business that we have known both personally and through the rescue for many years), and we took along 2 of our adoptable horses for "show and tell".
We chose to take Tighe (a big draft-cross gelding) and Gunner (a yearling QH colt), and they were absolutely wonderful throughout the whole thing. It started with trailering them from the rescue to another location to bathe them, and then loading them up again and
taking them to an unfamiliar place that had lots of people and noise and large scary tents. Both of them were very calm and friendly throughout the whole event, and we were so proud of them.
We are invited to attend another animal-related function, so once we figure out all the details (and if we can indeed attend) we will let everyone know!
July 1st, 2009
It is with great sadness that I report the loss of one of our more "popular" rescue horses, Maverick. As stated in his short Bio on the "Horses Available Soon" page, Maverick was admitted to the vet hospital on June 3rd for colic. After different diagnostic workups, it was thought that he was suffering from a case of anterior enteritis (an inflammation of the small intestine most likely caused by a bacterial infection). We decided to treat him medically at that point (versus surgically) and he miraculously recovered in record time and was able to come home after only 3 days in the hospital. He seemed completely fine after that, and we kept a close eye on him. Then, 2 weeks to the day of his first colic, he colicked again in the middle of the night, and by the time we found him in the morning his body was already going into shock and shutting down. He was too unstable at that point to take in to surgery, and our vet gave him a very poor prognosis even if he could be stabilized enough to operate on.
The vets suspect now that he had a narrowing of an intestinal loop (which can be caused by several different things) in which an obstruction built up, and his "recovery" from his first round of colic was just the blockage being broken up and passed through while he was hospitalized. Then when we brought him home, the obstruction built up again and caused him to colic even more severely.
We are all shocked at the sudden loss of Maverick, and will miss him greatly. It was made all the worse in that we recently had to say goodbye to 2 of our long term residents, Lucian and John, due to their advanced age and deteriorating health. We knew their time was coming to an end, and we were prepared to say our farewells to them. Losing Maverick, however, was unexpected (especially after celebrating his fantastic "recovery" from the first colic scare), which made it all the more difficult.
Aside from the sadness we have suffered here, there is good news as well. Several of our ponies have been adopted into good homes, and we are very happy and thankful for that. Hopefully the trend will continue and we can get more of our horses into wonderful homes throughout the summer and fall.
Here's wishing everyone a happy and safe 4th of July!
Amber Herrell
Founder/Director
June 9th, 2009
A new, EASY way to help support SAHR!
Change your internet search engine to GoodSearch, and every time you perform an internet search, a small monetary donation will be donated to SAHR!
Simply go to www.goodsearch.com, and enter in Shiloh Acres Horse Rescue in the space labeled "Who do you GoodSearch for?". It will ask you to confirm that Shiloh Acres Horse Rescue of Fort Collins is your charity of choice... and then you can go ahead and search the web as usual.
I would like issue a huge apology for the web site being out of date for so long... I have been having ongoing problems with my computer (not to mention my cell phone, work truck, and horse trailer), which makes updating the text and uploading new photos to the web site extremely slow and frustrating, usually causing the computer to freeze up multiple times during the whole process and require it to be shut down and restarted. It is finally somewhat fixed and running more smoothly, and the web site should be much easier to work on (and therefor updated much more often!) from now on. I hope everyone likes the new look of the site!
In other news, SAHR desperately needs to reduce our herd size by placing horses into good homes. Besides running out of time to work one on one with them all at this point...our finances are suffering right now (like everyone else's) due to the poor economy, and thanks to some other unforeseen disasters (big vet bills, repairs for the rescue's work truck, etc). Since most of the funding for the rescue is out-of-pocket and comes from my family right now, the fact that they have suffered pay cuts at work has cut into our budget.
On top of that, our hay pasture that we rely on to grow hay to feed all the rescue horses throughout the year suffered "winter kill" and will not be producing enough hay this year. We are paying a large bit of money to have the field reseeded, but it will take time for the new grass to take hold and grow in thick enough to cover all the dead spots in the hay field. Now that we will not be getting a good hay yield, we will be forced to buy hay at regular market prices during the rest of the year. Ouch.
There is a bit of good news on the horizon at least: Our 2008 tax returns for SAHR are almost done (we have had tax people working on them), and as soon as those are on file with the IRS, we should be able to start applying for some monetary grants. Since we received our official 501(c)(3) nonprofit status last year, 2008 became our first year to file a tax return. And since many grants require at least one year of tax return history with the IRS in order to be eligible, we have been unable to even apply for many of them.
In the meantime, we hope to place more horses into homes in order to cut back on our expenses, and have lowered adoption fees and are very willing to negotiate or consider offers on horses (to excellent, qualified homes of course!), especially on project and prospect horses that just need training.
That's all for now! Thank you all,
Amber Herrell
Founder/Director