Amanda's Foundered Friends Horse and Equine Rescue: Rescues

As we are still in the beginning stages of setting up our horse rescue, we only have three equines that we are currently rehabilitating. A mule named Rosie, who is our first foundered equine rescue, and the other two are the President's own horses, one of whom has suffered from founder in the past. Armed with our new knowledge, we are working towards rehabilitating both of them. Progress is slow and typically takes a year or more for full recovery. More pictures will be coming soon!

Rosie is our first official rescue; she is a 13 year old white mule molly. She came to us through a local veterinarian who saw her as a patient, diagnosed founder from a distance (he couldn't get near her, she didn't want anything to do with him or the owner), and referred her to us because the owner wanted to euthanize her to "not deal with it."

We have had her since August 2008; she has made definite progress both physically and mentally, having both founder and abuse issues to overcome. She is still untrusting and flinchy whenever we walk near her, expecting to be slapped or hit with a rope, but has made a lot of progress since we've had her.

She now enjoys attention instead of running away, and willingly puts her nose in the halter when we go to her. We are still working on her remaining trust issues. Her health has progressed also, but not as quickly as we'd hoped. She is much more comfortable since being on an all grass hay diet and getting her feet into better shape, but they still have a bit of recovery time ahead to be rid of the flared slipper shape from foundering.

She has had minimal training in the past, when we got her she knew how to go forward, but that is it. We assume she was either used as a pack mule or just for mountain trail riding. She has learned to back up since we have had her, and we are still working on teaching her to give to us both while leading and riding. It's a difficult concept for her to learn, since it involves a lot of trust in the handler. Our next goal with Rosie is to raise enough donations to have her eyelids tattooed, they are very pink and sensitive to the sun, and she is always very weepy due to this. This procedure usually runs around $300-400 per animal.

Rosie needs her eyes tattooed to lessen reflection of the sun to make her eyes more comfortable. This not an inexpensive operation and we need help! Please donate today!