Life in the world of GERL continues to swirl for me. After almost a year, I received a phone call from a county law enforcement deputy asking if we could take a couple of horses into our program. Of course, we said yes, but ended up with only one new horse. Who would have thought that our previous supply of “unwanted” horses would dry up? Since we have been educating law enforcement for 10 years, I guess I just expected that the flow would continue after the Department of Ag closed their barn.
Since GERL maintains a hotline, we have gotten calls about horses, but most of them have been about a horse running “at large”. That falls under the responsibility of local law enforcement because of the safety factor involved, so our local Area Coordinators do not typically get involved except under extenuating circumstances. For those of you who do not know, GERL has guidelines with regard to bringing horses into our program. First and foremost, we must have clear ownership. Secondly, we never purchase a horse to rescue it.
I have been giving a lot of thought about the programs that we have today that are impacted by this huge decline in the horse numbers. The Rescue Challenge is at the top of the list. We will soon be hosting our 7th Rescue Challenge event and I do believe it will be our last. We do not have the influx of horses to
select from in order to justify the work that goes into hosting such an event. This year’s Challenge has 3 horses from our program that will have 120 days of training at a cost of $5500. We have had to keep all 3 of these horses in our foster home program for a minimum of a year to have enough candidates for the Challenge competition. One of the horses has actually been in our program for two years. So, let me say this about that, we could afford to pay a trainer to work with any young horses that come into our program rather than holding them for extended periods of time so they can compete in an event that just does not seem to grow.
With the decline of horses in our own program, we were recently able to offer assistance to Calvin Center with their feed bill, once again. Last year we spent right at $8,000 on feed for their therapeutic horses. That agreement was fulfilled at the end of December. They were delighted when we called to tell them the news that GERL would be donating another $5,000 towards their feed bill starting March 1st. It is not cheap to feed 16 horses and it is gratifying to be able to help them out, especially since they are helping veterans.
Another thing that we are able to do this year because we don’t have the burden of so many horses is to offer small grants of $1,000 each for other non-profit organizations that provide equine therapy sessions to
veterans. Look for more information coming soon on our website about available grants and how /when they will be available.
Fewer horses coming in also means the end of our foster program as we now know it. In the future, I’m hoping that any new rescues that we bring into our program will be able to live on the veterans’ ranch. I would love to create a program with the veterans to teach them how to get a horse ready to be adopted, including everything that goes along with that task.
The possibilities are endless since we are in a
position to create our veterans’ program just the way we want. We are all looking forward to learning about the world of equine therapy!