What's New February?

I'm leaping......I must need new lenses as I seem to have fallen onto that black hole again! My apologies…I have aging parents, and it is sad, and difficult to be certain they are ok.

I am sorry to have dropped into a black hole. I got sick and went down for the count! I am back to the land of the living.

Updates!I want to congratulate Betty who entered a photo for PMR into a contest and won. The contest was hosted by Nonprofits' Insurance Alliance of California (NIAC) She will be receiving a $100 check for the rescue. Betty is an enormous asset to this organization. I congratulate her on her win and her talents!

Buddy and Sunny are being picked up this am by Melissa. Melissa is the Founder of a new organization called Horses Healing Hearts. She is going to use Buddy and Sunny as ambassadors of goodwill in her community of Danville and the outlying areas. She is a powerhouse, using all her contacts, connections and talent to make a difference in the lives of horses.

She raised $500 toward Buddy’s dental, and contributed to Black Jack’s fund when we were raising money for his surgery. She was a huge contributor to the PMU mares coming to us, and made an additional donation of $1000 on behalf of PMR to the Animali Farms for remaining horses waiting for a chance at a home. Frisco is a Palomino gelding we are hoping to have helped reduce his cost for a potential adopter. Go check him out! And Andrew. I am worried about Andrew as he is quite a big boy, and he probably isn’t a riding horse. He appears to be a 100% sweet, sound, loving DRAFT boy! I wish I could wrap my arms around him. Such a love.~ GO check out these guys!~

Whiskey has fallen hard. I’ve never seen my gelding so in love. Little Mocha won’t leave his side. They are inseparable. She is a youngster at 20. He is 25 now. His demeanor has completely changed. He s a new man! What a woman can do, yes?

Chevy has come into the fold. He is a stunning boy. I was to place him with Joanne down by Hearst Castle, but she feels he may need a bit more care than she can give. She hated to have to pass on him, as he is extraordinary…but putting the horse first, she did the right thing. I will continue to look for the perfect home for Chevy.

Last thought I just have to post the images of Andrew and Frisco…Praying they find great loving homes!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend! More Monday...We will probably know when the girls are arriving....

Come find out what Competitive Trail Riding is all about!
Feb 21, 7:00 PM
Santa Cruz County Horseman's Association
Graham Hill Showgrounds, 1145 Graham Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA 95060

All are welcome!

If you love trail riding and would like to meet more people who share your passion - or you're stuck at the office and trying to remember what it was like to ride your horse - Competitive Trail Riding (CTR) may be for you! CTRs, also known as NATRC rides, are paced events - NOT races - in which the rider and the horse are judged individually on fitness, manners and ability to go down the trail together. CTRs are held all around the state, with the ride managers show-casing the best trails in their areas. The presentation will cover the basic rules of the sport, the types of routes, the tack used, and how to get started. Come check us out!

Aren’t fonts fun..? I do believe fonts portrait a lot of expression and add to the verbage. So while I am hacking up a lung, and sitting on my couch, I thought I’d give updates and well, make them pretty at the same time. Now, I am also going to be watching my punctuation as I have a friend, a very awesome woman who once said……..

“ With spell check, there is no reason to look like a moron on paper” Well said I thought. So here I go. Pretty and correct updates coming your way!

SWAP MEET March 24, 2012 It’s a Saturday, & located across the street from the famous Santa Cruz Flea Market PMR will be hosting an awesome day. Come out and enjoy. Turn your old stuff in cool hard cash for your pocket!!! We are hosting this fun day in the vacant lot that you see pumpkins in at Halloween, and Christmas trees in December. You can easily find it. It’s right on Soquel Ave. The cross street is Thurber lane. Contact Betty bett56@yahoo.com or click on the tab on your left ß.

Horses coming and going! While we transition the newly adopted PMR clan into their new digs, and we patiently wait on the updates for our 3 girls, there is much I can do from my couch. (Who remember’s the poem “The Land of Counterplane” by Robert Louis Stevenson?)Ha, that’s how I feel.

PMR has successfully sanctuaried 3 mustangs from a place in the southland. Below is Carson, handsome guy.

Meet Chevy! This gorgeous 13 year old gelding is going to be my friend’s new boy. She owns all the acreage that sanctuaries the horses that can’t deal with humans anymore! She was looking for a sweet lovely boy to love on, fuss over and tinker around on as she checks on her herd!

Such a nice ending for all 4. Every horse I accept for sanctuary has indeed been at risk for losing their life. Not just a re-homing problem or an aging problem, but in the direct line of fire.

Okay moving on…Candy is due to arrive on Saturday. She is the TB/Appy girl from the southland (once again).This little girl in tears, pleading that she not have to send her girl to auction, running out of time, and getting pressure from her parents. Gosh I wish peoples light bulbs would go off! I’m not going to have this perfect horse, sound and ready in every way, turned into meat.

I have to work tomorrow and being home Friday means I will have much to catch up on when I get there… I will be back Tuesday~ Much love , go hug a horse, make a donation or muck someones stall~~~L

Here is an update from NAVS "Take Action Thursday!" regarding the integration of the last year's Horse Transportation Safety Act of 2011 ( S.1281 ) into a new House Bill H.R.7 now called American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act. (you would never know it contains information on how to transport horses)

Section 6606, “Transportation of Horses” is under attack by Colorado Representative Cory Gardner, who has proposed an amendment to strip this section out of the bill. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has given its approval to the entire bill, so it may come to the full House for a vote this week. If this bill does pass, let’s make sure that the ban on double-decker horse trailers is still included!

The provisions of S. 1281, the Horse Transportation Safety Act of 2011, have been incorporated in a much larger transportation bill, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, H.R. 7

Time is very short, so please CALL your U.S. Representative and ask them to OPPOSE the Gardner Amendment to H.R. 7 that would allow the continued unsafe use of double-decker horse trailers

I am waiting to hear from Melissa . I believe Buddy and Sunny are getting picked up today. Buddy is putting on weight and doing so well. The dental has made a difference and I am pleased for that.

This morning Leah was in a stall and none to happy about it. I had to chuckle as she stood there in disbelief as I didn’t let her out. Lori will be there, probably as we speak…or type..and she will put her out as she feeds and takes care of everyone.

Just wanted to let you know that I am doing really well and everyone is falling in love with me. I have adjusted to life in the pasture and am enjoying Patriot and LuLu. Especially Uncle P - he is a lot of fun, but can be a little bossy every once in a while. LuLu thinks I'm cute, and she is very kind, but her main interest seems to be all the green grass that's growing. She lets me stand right next to her, and sometimes I even get to share her dinner. I followed her a lot the first few days, but I got over that pretty quickly. This week Julie was circling P in the pasture and I was following him - I quit when I realized that when you circle you end up where you began. Just didn't see the point in it, but the big guy seemed to enjoy it.

I like laying in the grass when it's sunny, and when it rains I share a shelter with Uncle P. Everyone thinks I'm really cute, and I like to approach them and say hello. Winnie cookies are also very, very good, but I'm not too sure about carrots, and I really don't like apples yet - I spit them out.

As we prepare for our upcoming SWAP Meet~ (be sure to check out the tab) I came across this quote this morning. It is my favorite quote of all time...

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.

Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.

We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man.

In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.

They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

~ Henry Beston, from “The Outermost House”

Good Monday Morning to all~ I trust your weekend was relaxing and…or fun. We have been extremely busy and the next few weeks will bring tons of activity as we are putting many of our horses into their new homes.

Most Importantly we have raised funds to save all 3 pregnant mares. I will keep everyone updated as to their arrival.!!

Buddy and Sunny are going to Hearts Healing Horses Non profit in Danville. There they will be taught to be their sweet nice selves as children and adults learn about horses and how to care for them. If they are ridden especially Mr. Buddy, it will be light riding at best.

Doc Holiday and Illusion are heading over to the Amesti Foster Pasture and Snowflakes and Lady are finally coming home.

At this time PMR would like to gratefully thank and acknowledge NAVS and Janet! With Janet's hard wonderful work, she applied for and secured $5000 in funding for our mares. We thank the NAVS for the generous grant and I especially thank Janet for her work. I am so blessed to have volunteers who represent the rescue with such grace and finesse. Every person that donated to this campaign has made a difference in the lives of these mares and their unborn foals. Some of you have earned the"naming" rights to the foals. I thank each and every one of you! It helps the horses so very much!

Now, with that mentioned I also want to mention a nasty comment that was posted on facebook about our work. PMR was criticized, it was suggested that we are a phony operation and we were called boon-doggler’s and horse traders. I can assure all of you, we are none of those things. By putting the horse first, and always first we do receive negative commentary every now and then. So, with that mentioned, I will reiterate…There are many forms of horse abuse and many opinions around it. We are here for the horse. We neither support or deny Rodeos, Dressage events, High Jumping, Cart pulling, or Premarin Ranching. As a public charity we receive funding to get horses out of life threatening situations, and that is what we do. Please take a moment to see a brochure on the reality of Premarin and the lives of the horses.

FEB 7, 2012~~ Please enjoy the read...but please dont forget about the lst MARE WE ARE TRYING TO SAVE!

If you’d like to see all the (in-focus) photos I took on the trip, they are at

Just after Christmas in 2010, I met Lynn Hummer, who runs a horse rescue organization, Pregnant Mare Rescue (PMR), near where I board Sunny. She’s developed this rescue niche where she takes in horses who are threatened with death and keeps them until she can find them a home where they’ll be used, or a permanent sanctuary, if they don’t have a good chance of being trainable, safe, and staying sound – so she works with all genders, breeds and ages of horses, despite the name of her organization. The first experience I had with Lynn was hauling 4, 13 week old mustang babies, who’d been orphaned at a Nevada feed lot. In the year since, Lynn got the babies adopted out to good homes and we thought they were on their way.

Unfortunately, Alberto, who had adopted two of them, recently called Lynn and told her that his wife had become pregnant and he didn’t feel that he would have either the time or financial resources to keep the mares. (Clarification: it was unfortunate for the babies, not for Alberto!) It’s Lynn’s policy that a horse can always come back, so she gave me a call and we went up to get the mares. She posted on *her* blog about it, and Laurie Dearinger, who just got her rescue operation organized and blessed, read the blog and offered to take one of the mares, Sapphire, as her first rescue! So our mission was to go to Alberto’s, in El Sobrante, pick up both mares, take Sapphire up to Laurie’s place, near Santa Rosa, then bring Sunny home to Larkin Valley. Whew – a long haul for Lynn and me, but it would be epic for Sunny.

I picked up Lynn at 7 AM and she told me Alberto had called and told her that Sapphire had jumped out of her paddock and joined a herd of eight other horses in a “really large” pasture above his barn. Sapphire had lost some ground since leaving Lynn’s place, and no longer dealt gracefully with a halter, so there were a bunch of things that made the situation complicated, and Lynn was a little stressed.

Anyhow, we got there about 10 AM. Alberto wasn’t around so Lynn’s first order of business was to check in with Sunny. By the time Sunny and Lynn were getting comfortable, Alberto arrived from the pasture where Sapphire was roaming. Alberto told us that his strategy was to halter the lead mare of the herd and just lead the whole bunch down to his area, get Sapphire loaded into the trailer, then lead the rest all back to the pasture. Lynn approved of the approach, but the problem was that Alberto and his two friends had had no luck catching the lead mare, and they’d been working since 7 AM. We piled into Alberto’s truck and went up to the pasture. Sheesh.

The pasture I keep Sunny in is about 12 acres. If it is, in fact, twelve acres, this pasture is at least 150 acres and it has streams, trees, ridges, and several meadows. Alberto’s two friends were on horseback, so they could get on the ridgetops and find the horses, and they could sort of drive them in a general direction, but they couldn’t get close enough to actually get a hand on that lead mare. One of the fellows was a roper, but was just using his lariat to drive the horses – makes a great picture anyway.

Lynn listened and watched for . . . two minutes and then took off walking down to the meadow nearest the gate. She had the mounted guys move the horses down to the meadow, then retreat to the ridgetop. She just stood there for a few seconds, then started slowly making her way into the nine horse herd, keeping a really relaxed posture and avoiding eye contact with any of the horses. She got to the lead mare and squatted next to her. Pretty soon the mare put down her head. I don’t know what Lynn did then, but soon after, she stood up with her arms around the mare’s neck and got Alberto to bring her a rope. Lynn tied a quick halter out of the rope and started leading the mare out, with the rest of the horses following!

The horses broke away several times, but Lynn and her “partner” mare just stood and waited while the caballeros got the horses back behind the mare, then continued walking. About 20 minutes after we arrived, we were back at Alberto’s barn with Sapphire and Sunny in the arena and my trailer backed up to the gate. Lynn hadn’t even looked at Sapphire while she was doing the “capture”, so her first agenda item was to get to be friendly with her – via some alfalfa. Sapphire was all over that. Then, over the next 20 minutes, we first got Sunny into the trailer – she’s good in a halter – and Sapphire followed her in – sans halter.

The trust those mares put in Lynn – and, I guess, each other – is miraculous. Sapphire, in particular, had spent the last three hours being chased by people on horseback and an hour later, she’s stepping into a trailer like she was a Gran Prix horse who *lives* in a trailer! Anyhow, they settled in immediately – I had split up a flake of alfalfa and distributed it on the trailer floor and I don’t think Alberto’s rations ran to alfalfa – and we headed for Santa Rosa, where we were going to drop Sapphire off.

Sapphire is going to be the first horse taken in by the newly organized Blue Horse Rescue (http://www.bluehorserescue.org/), run by Laurie Dearinger of Blue Horse Design. Laurie adopted a horse from Lynn several years ago, was inspired, and now has entered the rescue world herself.

Sapphire and Sunny at the Entrance to Sapphire's Pasture - you can see Lulu and Laurie in the background

Laurie planned for Sapphire to be in ~2 acre pasture with two other horses, and surrounded by similar pastures, also with two or three horses per pasture – so there are plenty of horses to bond and interact with. The pasture is was perfectly situated for our purposes: since Sapphire couldn’t be led with a halter, we had to have a no-mistakes-possible route to the pasture, which we did. The pasture gate was just beyond a bridge with handrails. I was able to back the trailer up to the bridge and block that exit and the hand rails acted like fence rails, so when we opened the trailer doors, there was only one way to go: toward the pasture.

Laurie met Sapphire with her mare Lulu (on line), who will be sharing the pasture with Sapphire, and Lulu and Laurie started walking the pasture with Sapphire. Lynn also brought Sunny, the other mustang, into the pasture, as well. Sapphire sort of wandered between Lulu and Sapphire, and darted out to meet the eight horses that she shared fences with. Actually, she seemed totally at ease in the pasture: she grabbed a drink early on, then found where someone had left some hay, then started rooting in the grass . . . So Lynn put Sunny back in the trailer, and Laurie let Lulu off line – and it was totally boring – I mean, perfect! Sapphire didn’t even look up when Sunny left and Lulu just started grazing with Sapphire.

The next move was to bring in Patriot, the gelding Laurie had adopted from Lynn, who is also going to share the pasture. Sapphire wasn’t interested in him, but, boy, was he interested in her! He was pretty excited while he was on-line, but Sapphire knows how to act in a herd, so when Patriot quieted a little, he got turned loose. He immediately ran to Sapphire and started trying to move her. She went along with it for a little while, then let him know she was no push-over.

The Stand Off. Or maybe the Kick Off (No horses were harmed in the production of this blog - it was pure show!)

They moved a little more, and had a little show down – emphasis on “show” – then took off, ran the field together for a lap or two, then Sapphire lost interest in the game and went to meet her new fence-mates. I’m never sure I’m interpreting horse behavior properly, but Sapphire looked like a happy little horse.

And that was pretty much the end of our adventure. We hopped in the truck and came back to Santa Cruz. Sunny got out and settled right back in to her old place. So. If anyone’s interested in seeing the cutest little mare ever, go visit Lynn – Sunny’s back!

It was an epic adventure! 13 hours in the making. Sapphire is at Blue Horse Rescue in Healdsburg. Sunny is back at PMR. Donna my hauler extraordinaire is blogging and hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have the story up and pics too.

I have been invited to the AT&T tomorrow and so I will go and probably stand in the rain (LOL) and see some friends.

Black Jack‘s surgery was made possible by the very folks that follow contribute and donate to PMR! We are extremely happy to say he came thru his surgery very well, and is resting and healing. For Susan, she does believe in miracles, as her beloved best friend can now spent the rest of his long happy life with her. It’s a blessed gift to start the New Year.

Buddy had his teeth done! He is a happy boy, hasn’t stopped eating since the visit. When I tried to get a peek at Dr. Terry’s work he quite plainly said

Donna and I are anxious to go get her. The surprise is…she is not coming back to PMR! My dear extraordinary friend, founder of Blue Horse Design and Blue Horse Rescue is taking Sapphire in Healdsburg! This is really wonderful news for a couple of reasons. The first is that I would trust Laurie with my own life. Her diligence to care is unsurpassed and her trainer Julie Cross is a Parelli gal. She’ll make sure Sapphire is treated the sweet kind way we like to see our horses handled.

More news….I met Ali up last night and is going to take Vegas on trial, up to “Coast Road Stables”. After reviewing her application, we chatted last night and I feel she has nice qualifications to take good care of our girl Las Vegas.

Gina is waiting on the arrival of Candy! She is a super cute appy/Tb cross, does it all ..and super sweet. Loves the kids. I think she'll be a perfect match for Gina. Her mom went off to college and wanted to be sure Candy would always be safe..that is what we do. Candy is a treasure!

I’ll be scheduling that haul for the following week. I have two horses I am considering for sanctuary, and so I have to coordinate Candy’s arrival with that effort as well.

Whew!! it’s a very busy time. My volunteers, Betty, Janet, Jeanne, Sharon, Alex, Stephanie, Sarah, Leah and Alex#2 have all been tirelessly making things happen.

Don’t forget our Swap Meet Coming up March 24^th. Turn your old stuff into Cash!!!!

It’s a quick update! Donations are beginning to come in for our mares! Many thanks to all who can step up to help out! More this afternoon, as I am juggling many items this am!