Offering horses a second chance

Times are tough for horses. Between the pinch of hard economic times and spikes in the cost of hay, horse owners are finding it hard to take care of their animals.

Some surrender them voluntarily; some situations fall into heartbreaking neglect.

Sound Equine Options (SEO) was founded in 2009 by equine veterinarian Scott Hanson, seeking to address the plight of horses whose owners cannot afford to provide them with basic care.

Two SEO horses were in Sisters last weekend, at Weston Equine Services at the intersection of Highway 126 and Holmes Road.

Stacey Riggs was at Weston for a two-day natural horsemanship clinic, and she brought along Willie, an SOE horse she is training with the goals of finding him a new, happy home.

"They get them fed up and then they need to train them, because if you just send them out, they'll go down the same road they did before," Alison Weston, co-owner of the equestrian center, explained.

Weston is working with another SEO horse named Teddy Bear.

Riggs said that the training regimen starts with the assumption that the horses have no training at all.

"We start from the foundation," she said.

That means lots of groundwork and lots of desensitizing.

Riggs has her own horse rescue outfit in Eagle Point, called Full Circle Equine Rescue.

"We basically partner with SEO," she said.

Riggs thought last weekend's clinic at Weston Equine Services would be a good opportunity to get Willie some experience of the world.

"He's never been exposed to anything, and basically he's a nervous wreck," she said. "He needs to travel... He was in the clinic as well."

Riggs trains horse-owners in natural horsemanship, which can be summed up as "learning how to communicate with the horse in their own language."

The clinic, which had six participants, involved a lot of groundwork.

"It's teaching owners how to get respect from their horses," Riggs said. "You get respect by getting them to move their feet."

In just the first day of work, a group of horses that tended to run roughshod over their owners was instead working in partnership. Willie, who started the morning nervous and rearing, ended up relaxing and dozing off in the arena.

Horse rescue outfits across the nation are straining to maintain the resources to meet the demands of caring for their charges.

For more information on supporting SOE, visit www.soundequineoptions.org or www.fullcirclerescue.com.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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