Horses for Hope Celebrates 15 Years!

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Horses for Hope will be celebrating 15 years of service this June!!  We will be holding this celebration event on June 16, 2018 from 6 PM till 10 PM at our facility (2909 Banks Rd, Raleigh, NC 27603).  ALL folks who have had some connection with Horses for Hope, whether you were or are currently a volunteer, donor, therapeutic riding family, or in our riding lessons are invited to come to this free event.  We will have live music from the band 2Digh4, food and fun.  We will provide the dinner meats (smoked pig, chicken and hot dogs) and we will ask some folks to bring a side dish and desserts. Due to the number of folks that HfH has served over the years we MUST have everyone who plans to attend to RSVP via this link – https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60b0e4caaae22a4fe3-hfh15year – so we can be sure we have enough to feed everyone.  This will be a fun family event – come fellowship with all of us!!

Keeping Our Horses Warm in Winter

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People often look at horses in pastures and wonder why some horses have blankets and others do not. It’s a good question and hotly debated in equine circles.  You will see some farms where none of the horses are blanketed. You’ll see others where they all are blanketed. Then there are others like Horses for Hope where some of our horses wear blankets and others do not.

The first thing we do to help keep our horses warm is to feed them.  A horse eats 1.5-2% of their body weight in forage (grass and hay) a day. That’s 15-20 pounds of hay for a 1000 pound horse.  In addition to hay, horses get grain to provide them with vitamins, minerals, and, if needed, additional calories. The amount of grain is determined by the horse’s size, weight, if it is an easy or hard keeper, age, and the type of work it does.  Our horses get their grain divided into two servings a day.  Look at the pictures and you will notice that there are piles of hay all around.  That’s because their grain isn’t the main fuel for their internal furnace, hay is!

Then there are those amazing horse coats! Horses can move each hair on their body independently. When it’s hot they can slick their coat down against their body. When it’s cold they can stand each hair up creating a puffy blanket around themselves. Want to warm your hands up on a cold day? Slide them through a horse’s coat and feel the delicious warmth next to their skin. Other horses are thinner, have finer coats, health issues, or perhaps their hair is clipped and they need a blanket if they are turned out into a pasture.

Sox is in the first picture. He just turned 32 on February 1st and is the oldest horse in our herd! Look closely at his picture and you can see how heavy his coat is. He doesn’t need a blanket!

Valor is in the second picture. He has a very fine coat which means he has less natural insulation against the cold.  He is also a thoroughbred, a breed which is typically thin-skinned and hard keepers.  So, he wears his blanket to help keep warm.

Here’s some more information about those amazing coats!

 

Snow Days at Horses for Hope

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While a snow day means some of us get to lounge around in our pajamas all day the needs of our horses don’t stop. We still need to come to the barn twice a day to give them their hay and grain.  Freezing temperatures mean that we need to break the ice on water troughs so our horses can drink. If it’s cold enough the water can freeze and we have to carry water to their troughs. That’s a lot of water!  Keeping the horses on a regular feeding schedule and making sure they can drink their fill helps to keep them healthy and prevents colic.

   

We Couldn’t Do It Without Our Volunteers!

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Saturday was another hay delivery day and our fantastic volunteers worked under a Carolina blue sky to get this load put in the hay loft. Do you know horses need to eat 1.5-2% of their body weight in forage a day? All that hay keeps their digestive system working at peak efficiency. The digestive process generates heat and along with their remarkable winter coats keeps them warm even when it’s well below freezing.  During the winter our herd eats 8-10 bales of hay a day!

  

 

 

Check out Pete’s fuzzy wuzzy winter coat! Those warm winter coats aren’t as effective when they are caked with mud. Thanks to our volunteers for grooming Pete so he’s prepared for the cold temperatures.

 

Want to get involved? Email us at volunteer@HorsesforHope.org for information.

Special Thanks to our biggest donors for 2017

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Another year has passed and 2017 has proven to have been a year full of blessing for Horses for Hope.

Baker roofing and Commercial Solutions took time off from being competitors and came together to give us a new barn roof.  The roof on our main barn had gotten in such bad shape that we could only safely use a small portion of the barn.  It’s such a blessing to now be able to use the entire barn.

Over the years we had been losing more and more of our riding ring sand to runoff from heavy rains.  We called Brinley Grading in Garner for advice on how to correct this problem.  After they came out and inspected our facility it was decided that our best course of action would be to simply resurface the ring with new sand.  Brinley Grading Co went way beyond anything we expected and called around to several sand companies in central North Carolina getting them to donate the 7 loads of sand needed for the job.  Then Brinley Grading hauled and delivered the sand and resurfaced our riding ring free of charge.

Mr & Mrs Joe & Libby Mitchiner of the Mitchiner Law Firm provided us with an awesome surprise in mid December when they funded our first Therapeutic Riding Scholarship Fund that will cover 4 riders for 2018 spring and fall sessions.

God continues to provide our needs through not only these incredible businesses and individuals but also the hundreds of volunteers that serve in various positions all year long.  Thanks to all of you for helping us continue our mission of helping those with Special Needs in 2018.

Red Hat work day

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HfH is pleased to welcome the help of Red Hat Technologies.  On January 19, 2018 a group of approximately 15 volunteers from Red Hat Technologies, led by Alex Unger will be giving back to their community by volunteering at Horses for Hope.  They will be assisting in cutting new trails in the woods prior to the launch of our new trail riding program that is scheduled to start in the spring of 2018.  The additional income that this new program will generate will be used to help us continue our no cost Therapeutic Riding Program that is currently serving 40 families with over 270 families on our waiting list.  HfH extends in advance a huge thank you to Red Hat Technologies for all of their help.

Ellie

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DOB: 1/1/2002

Joined the Herd: December 2017

Breed: Quarter Horse

Sex: Mare

Color: Bay

Ellie was was previously a ranch horse and came to us from Alabama.  She is a beautiful bay with a bald face and 4 white socks.  She is used in Western, English, Jumping and Therapeutic lessons.

 

Cooper

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DOB: 1/1/2013

Joined the Herd: 2016

Breed: Miniature Horse

Sex: Gelding

Color: Buttermilk Buckskin

Cooper was a rescue in reverse!  This miniature horse was extremely obese when he came to us in the summer of 2016.  In the first picture below you can see the wrinkles in his neck slightly turned – he was so fat he could not reach his side to get a fly. Cooper was also a cryptorchid stallion when he came to Horses for Hope. The surgery for gelding a cryptorchid stallion is $1,000 but the NCSU Veterinary School took him on as a teaching project for their students and he was successfully gelded at no cost to us. Thank you NSCU Vet School!

He is handsome now!

Volunteer Farrier Helps Horses for Hope

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A new volunteer has come to Horses for Hope – his name is Joe Rotenberry. He is a Certified Journeyman Farrier that has recently come to this area. He has donated his services to Horses for Hope trimming our mini horses. We are thankful for his donation to our organization!

HfH Happenings

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Hello everyone, keep an eye on HfH Happenings for bi-weekly updates of whats going on around the barn and up coming events.

  • Training:  In an effort to get more consistency and better responsive with our horse we have implemented an intense training program that all or our horses will be participating in.  Titan and Romeo will be the first horses to complete this program and are scheduled to go into our lesson program in the spring of 2018.
  • We have added a training area complete with an obstacle course.  This area is being used to further our horses training, making them gentler, more respectful and more responsive for our students.
  • We currently have three colts that we are breaking and training.  Rocky, Chase and Gunner are currently in our colt starting program and should be in the under saddle portion of their training in the spring of 2018.
  • A Trail Riding Program has been added for 2018 and is scheduled to start in the spring.  Start date will be announced later.