Saturday, March 19, 2011

Wild Horse Rescue Center in Florida

We’ve finally settled in at the ranch. They didn’t have a traditional RV hookup here so Joe manufactured what they didn’t have.  He took a 55 gallon drum and made a septic system – it actually tied into an old existing one. I love my husband!

Our septic system trench

Completed septic system Our RV

He also made a “front yard” for Jadyn.

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Not only do they have mustangs here at the ranch, but they have some at two different locations on land people are letting them use.

Every day these horses are brought food. In the pictures below the horses are trying to get the hay right off the truck. You can see the brand on the neck of one of them.

Freeze-brand on neck Mustangs eating hay

Joe and Jadyn are saying Hi to Tatonka and the horses in the next picture are following the truck to where the feed is put out for them.

Joe, Jadyn and Tatonka Where's the food!

At the other piece of land they have “sanctuary horses” which are horses that can never be ridden or used for anything. They have been abused so badly both physically and mentally that they cannot recover from it. So these horses are in the “sanctuary” to live out their lives peacefully.

Below Diane (founder of Wild Horse Rescue) is giving hay to these sanctuary horses AND to the pet cows they share the pasture with. Jadyn of course had to pet one of the HUGE cows and then she posed pretty for a picture. :)

Sanctuary horses Cows eating hay

Petting a cow Jadyn

It’s been pretty nice here because we get to meet all kinds of different people  that come to volunteer. The lady in the picture with Romeo is a farrier from Quebec. Diane, Romeo’s owner, is showing the farrier that he lets people pick up his feet.

Diane and Romeo Anik and Romeo

Romeo is such a gorgeous stallion! Here he’s blowing off some energy and also saying Hi to one of the baby mustangs.

Romeo Romeo and a baby

Here are the babies playing around.

Baby Wild Mustangs The babies are full of energy!

Jadyn gets to help do things around here too. Below she’s helping one of the volunteers groom Little Thunder.

Jadyn grooming Little Thunder Jadyn and Little Thunder

She also gets to help with McBob the donkey.

Jadyn leading McBob Giving McBob a treat

She also likes to sweep. Here she’s helping get ready for a Parelli Clinic put on for the volunteers.

My cowgirl sweeping Sheeeew! That's hard work!

And this is Sandy Vann the Parelli instructor and you might also recognize her from my posts from last year (around May). We stayed at her ranch for a little bit and helped out. I guess you could say that’s where we got our start on the ranch circuit. Her website is http://www.aceofheartsranch.com .

Sandy and Thunder Sandy and Thunder

One of the cool things about being on the space coast is seeing launches. The picture below is the launch from February 24th. It was a pretty cool picture with the horse’s head in it too. :)

                                   Shuttle launch

And these pictures were of a rocket launch. The way the sunset was hitting the clouds made them look really neat.

                Rocket exhaust Rocket launch

Here’s a picture of my handsome cowboy. :) And of him playing guitar with a friend.

Joe Joe guitar

And I am happy to say we finally made it to the beach – our favorite – Playalinda. We didn’t actually swim in the water since it was so cold. But we let our legs get wet. Ok. So a few times we weren’t paying attention and the waves would get us more wet than we wanted. It was still fun because after a while we couldn’t feel the cold. :o) We also flew a kite and played frisbee.

Yikes this is cold!

Jadyn in the ocean

Jadyn running in the surf flying her kite.

Jadyn flying her kite

My two girls gettin’ some sun (and Joe trying to figure out if his shelter is going to hold in the strong wind – it did.)

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Joe and Jadyn hanging out in the shelter – in the background is the kite – he has it pegged to the ground.

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We have a mustang awareness event next week with a Native American theme. We’ll be painting Romeo to look like a war pony. I’ll post more about it next week.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Jeanne,

    My name is Nicole Willson and I work for RVParking.com, an RV park review website for RVers from all walks of life.

    I manage the guest blog program for blog.rvparking.com and recently one of our readers asked about horse farms in Florida. Would you be interested in writing about how you got started volunteering at Wild Horse Rescue? If so, please send me an email at nicole at rvparking dot com.

    I look forward to hearing from you.

    Best,

    Nicole

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sure - that would be no problem. We only get on the internet about once a week though so I'll get back with you next week with something. :)

    ReplyDelete