Rescue Ruckus

This is kind of a hard subject for me to write about, because I honestly do not believe anyone gets involved in horse rescue with anything other than the best of intentions. I'm fairly sure no one wakes up one morning and chooses to start a rescue with the intent of committing fraud, or doing any of a myriad of things various rescue orgs have been accused of over the years. I could be wrong, though I sincerely doubt it.

Recently yet another horse rescue has come under fire for misappropriation of funds, lying to donors, neglect and all kinds of shady, terrible things. This isn't a new set of allegations against horse rescues, most have to deal with things of this nature for the duration of their existence. Such instances frequently come from disgruntled former volunteers, donors or adopters who've been cut out of the "family" for one reason or another. Then there are the instances where people walk away and speak out because they can just no longer be a part of something they originally believed to be good.

My own angle here is to see if there might be some means of making sure there's some kind of an end to the games people play, so that first and foremost horses aren't harmed. What's frustrated me for years about rescue, is that it's so often more about the rescuers' egos than actually helping horses. "But I've saved more horses than you!" is a common theme. Really? Who cares! As long as horses are being saved, even one horse at a time, shouldn't that be what really matters?

I'm going to wrap this up now, and revisit the topic at another time for more in depth discussion, because it aggravates me so much and I don't like the idea of getting so riled up at bedtime. We have a huge issue out there with horses needing to be taken care of and horses that need homes. Our horse market is at an historic low, meaning too many folks just can't afford to own horses anymore. There are simply too many issues to get into right now.

While there was a lull in auction consignments for several years, locally they all seem to be full of horses again and that's not exactly good news. At least a couple of auctions that only a few years ago had no horses being run through seem to be presently inundated with equine. None of this is beneficial to the horse market. What are the solutions? Honestly, I wish I knew. It's a terribly painful realization that, just maybe, we really CAN'T save them all.

~SFTS