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How it all began

Back in 2005, the Trustees were offered a herd of six ponies, mostly under a year old, who had been left on a farm which was being sold off.  Gordon purchased them and really, from that point forward, the concept of the rescue centre was born.  Unfortunately, one of the colts was very poorly and had to be put to sleep.  Commanche is the only remaining one of the original herd - the others are now all in safe, permanent homes.  Since then, we have taken horses from various sources and either kept them or re-homed them but, when the opportunity arose to sell up our house in Brighton and move out of town to start the livery yard that Vanessa had always intended upon, it suddenly dawned on us that perhaps we would rather start ‘officially’ doing what we had been doing all along - rescuing horses in need!

We have now been in operation since May 2010 and have made considerable progress with getting the yard up to standard - thanks entirely to the efforts of Martin and Gordon after work and at weekends!  We are currently fundraising to reach a target of £30,000 to complete the works, including installing proper fencing and building a hay barn.

The volume of calls that we receive is phenomenal, however, it must be said that around 90% of these are from people who really want a retirement home for their horse.  Whilst we would love to take in every horse, we really can’t as we just don’t have the space, time or money to spend with them over a horse which is in desperate need through neglect, cruelty or the threat of an untimely end.  We have space for fourteen horses and ponies at our centre - any more and we do not believe that we would be able to give them the individual care and attention that they each deserve.

There seems to be a particularly high number of ex-racehorses who have become somewhat ‘out of control’; we would like to remind readers that buying a green ex-racehorse is a big undertaking – they are generally completely institutionalised and do not understand what we consider to be a ‘normal’ yard routine.  They do make fantastic riding horses but need constant leadership and a lot of time to adjust.  Before buying an ex-racehorse, please research fully and be sure that you are aware of the work involved and experienced enough to deal with the situations which will inevitably arise.  Some good places to start are Racehorse Rehoming (www.racehorserehoming.co.uk), The Thoroughbred Rehabilitation Centre (www.thoroughbredrehabilitationcentre.co.uk) and Retraining of Racehorses (www.ror.org.uk).

We hope that you will support our cause and enjoy browsing our website.