About the equine rescues on this site

Hello and Welcome

With this site I hope to share with you my experiences with rescue horses in France .You will see some of the lovely caracters who have started their new lives with a contract in place to protect their future
Many horses and ponies are destined for slaughter and are not all , like you might think , problem horses and ponies , lame or in bad health . Of course some arrive in a very poor state even handicapped through neglect . Many though are just foals or heavy horses that have been bred just to sell at meat price , and trotters who did not qualify to race , very sadly some who have been sold in good faith when circumstances change and end up at dealers yards . While live transport to abbatoires as far as Italy still operate there will be horses and ponies enduring this journey often with little thought to welfare.
Most rescues are achieved with a co-ordinated effort between rescue associations ,websites , and most importantly willing memberships who offer to adopt ,offer temporary grazing , transport or donations to the associations

Thankyou for supporting the site

Hi Cally Glad to see you are still hard at it - keep up the good work Bonne chance B

Hi Barbara
Good to see you here
see you soon
c xx

although in general i agree with cally 50 that not all rescues are a basket case or broken in some way, it needs to be said that what is a big problem to some owners is a minor inconvienience to others,
what is too expensive for some to think of paying out is normal maintainance costs to others, often what is lacking for the rescues is someone with enough experience who can see past the obvious to what it needs, in some cases a *minor fix is all, but you would STILL need to know what to fix.

it also needs saying that some 'rescue' organisations have given the movement a bad name, from mis-describing the animals or under stating problems to outright lies, a good rescue would not place a horse in a home where the owner to be was not aware of what they were taking on, and that they had the experience & resourses to cope.
a lot of the horror stories come from the bad rescues, it is up to us all to promote the good rescues, Hip HIp HOorah cally 50

* for example, my trotter had teeth in desperate need of rasping, she could not eat & she would have quickly lost condition, since she was 23y at that time many would have thought it due to age or something serious - thats prob why she went to the meat yard, ALL it took was a 35 euro teeth rasp treatment, and she was ok.

Some very good points there Salee
I think if you are using a site where there is just a photo and brief description of the rescue horse or pony then the site is probably relying on the owner or dealer to be truthful and may not have seen the equine first hand, I am sure generally the sites want to be and are as truthful as possible as its not in their interests to mismatch equine and new owner but as anyone knows whether buying privately or at sales or dealers etc there is a risk and as rescues experienced people generally understand that risk and are prepared to take the chance and indeed get alot of pleasure from helping an equine enjoy life again.
If I put any rescues on here they will come from trusted sources and /or I will see them myself but I don't want to get into sticking everything on thats out there as they are already getting their chance on rescue sites , for the future I prefer to find ones that are not already getting their chance and get a good idea of caracter state of health etc

hi thanks,

not meant as a 'go' at most current sites, most of which are working hard and give as much info as they can,

although 1 french based rescue site still running...... which sent a rescue to a home in the UK which had an obvious huge tumour on the side NOT photographed and which was NOT mentioned, who said the horse had been vetted as the buyer had requested a vetting, which came with no translation except 'the vet said it is ok', thus the UK buyer thought it WAS ok, but the vetting was only an ID check and to past as fit to travel, this horse had to be PTS after a few weeks in UK on a UK vets advise.

or another now extinct -thank goodness- site which sent:-
a mare and foal with a series of untreated wounds to the head over which needing immediate vet attention on arrival,
an entire which was described as gelded,
a 12.3hh described on its ad as 14.2hh,
this sort of mistake in description is not something easy to miss & i doubt you Cally50 would be so careless, my point is it is as important to check out the quality of the organisation offering the rescues as it directly impacts on the quality of the details about the rescue.
bad publicity like above put off genuine offers of rescue, we need to redress the balance with our succesfull rescue stories.

we can only save a few, but if we all give up trying we fail them all. bye

exactly , thats the sort of reason I only go through people I trust or I will have seen myself as although thankfully its rare that such serious problems arise they do need too be avoided , can you pm me the French rescue site that sent the one with the tumour for info Thanks

Hello
I lost my lovely 19 year old mare 3 weeks ago due to a long illness, her companion (a 16 year old Haflinger is lonely now).
I would like to offer a kind home to a pony or horse but don't know which association to try. I live near Sillé le Guillaume in the Sarthe.
Any advice welcome!

Hello and Julie

So sorry for your loss , I recommend you look at this associations site as they cover all of France

http://galoppourlavie.forumactif.org/forum.htm

They will have a companion I'm sure or maybe you could foster an urgent case ?

let me know if you get stuck