Our second year as a rescue was a whirlwind of minis and to top it all off, there was this tiny global pandemic. We set out with a goal of rescuing or rehoming 60 minis in 2020 (we had 37 in 2019) and being involved with rescuing or rehoming at least one full sized horse. We are rounding out the year with 75 miniature horses, donkeys and mules having been involved with Little Hooves Rescue. 36% of our minis this year were from owner surrenders who needed our help rehoming their minis. Looking back, we were pretty surprised by how big this number was. We were contacted about 27 minis (or horses) during the year who needed our help finding a new family of their own. On the flipside we got 48 minis (or horses) from the auctions and kill pens in both Texas and Oklahoma throughout the year.
We did see a bigger shift towards pulling minis (20) from the Stroud Kill Pen in Oklahoma during 2020. However, due to their increased popularity, prices are starting to rise, and we are exploring other auction options for 2021. We would love to pull more from the Bowie monthly auction and are doing more research into their online bidding system.
In 2020 we said goodbye to two beautiful souls. The first being Aria, a blind quarter horse mare, that we pulled from the direct ship pen in Oklahoma. She was recently blind, completely beat up and her body was failing her. She went directly to our hauler, and dear friend, Jen McCleve’s property where she was evaluated by vets daily and on several medications. After a few days, she told us it was time for her to go and she laid down and passed away in Jen’s arms. In her last moments, she felt nothing but love. We also had Dove, a mini from Kaufman, who we made the decision to humanely euthanize. She ended up in the kill pen with a dislocated hock and several torn tendons. Vets said she had a very low chance of ever living pain free. They had to basically carry her into the clinic because she was too weak to walk. We knew the best thing for her was going to be ending her suffering and letting her finally find peace. While there are hard days in the rescue world, we know that both these horses are in a better place and met a much better fate than what awaited them at the kill pens.
As we look forward into 2021, we have several exciting announcements in store so stay tuned. We are going to continue to expand our efforts, hopefully travel to a few new auctions and want to maintain our cadence of rescuing 5 minis a month.
