Where do they come from?

Rehabilitation Process

Retraining

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Need to find your horse a home?

The Rehabilitation Process

• How much does it cost?
• What is involved in getting a horse ready to adopt?
• How long does it take?

The horses are evaluated upon arrival. Most are quarantined 3-4 weeks. You can come visit a horse you're interested in before he reaches our Available Horses list, but you may or may not be able to ride him.

During the time the horse is in our care, do a through evaluation, trying to learn everything we can about him or her.

We put the horse on an appropriate diet and almost all of them get as much hay or grass as they can eat. Getting a horse caught up means we put far more food into them than normal until he's back to a more normal weight.

The horses live turned out and with other horses so they can relax for awhile and just be a horse. After they've settled in awhile, we check them for signs of lameness or back soreness in preparation for starting them back to work.

The whole time we're doing this, we're getting to know the horse. We look at his ground manners. We watch for vices. Do keep in mind some bad habits are triggered by environmental cues, stress, or the manner of handling; a horse may act a little differently as he settles in to your farm. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to call or email.

We never drug a horse to control behavioral problems or to mask pain. Any use of bute or banamine is done only under a vet's orders.

The horse will get his vaccinations and any problems treated. Common problems we find on incoming horses include rainrot, parasites, scrapes, and hoof neglect.

Dental care is done by a good equine dentist or from the vet at our clinic who is very good doing teeth. The vet may need to give some tranquilizers in order to keep the horse still enough to do a thorough job. Since some of these horses haven't had dental care in many years, doing their teeth can take quite a bit of time.

We deworm using a basic oral wormer. If the horse might be full of worms, we'll start with a basic dose of something like Safeguard. We must be vigilant & watch for colic or other problems following worming. While it doesn't happen very often, it is possible a huge number of worms dying off at once will cause problems for the horse. We'll follow up with something stronger a few weeks later, such as Ivermectin gold (the "gold" is for tapeworms). In a few cases when the horse is slow to gain weight, a 5-day Panacur Powerpak may be used: this is daily double-dosing for 5 full days to kill any encysted (burrowed in) worms.

The vet will at some point come out and give the horse a full health exam. Any problems she finds are noted in the horse's vet records and are treated. She will have the horse trotted in hand to look for lameness problems. In some cases, we will also pay to have radiographs (x-rays) done if there is a joint of concern. All of this will be available for you to review. If you need additional information or want the horse vetted for as specific discipline (such as "will he be sound for competitive jumping over taller fences?"), this is a case when you should have your own vet do a full exam.

When the horse is ready, we move on to training.

The rehabilitation process can be as short as about a month for a horse who doesn't need quarantine or extensive care.

Our longest rehab was 7 months before he was sound enough to be started back to work,and then another few months to get him into just the right home. This belgian has a foot infection in both front feet and needed repeated surgeries.

Then we must care for the horse until a suitable home is found. We do not put horses down to make room. At the moment we have one who's been here over 2 years and is still looking for someone to adopt him.