The Broken Horse Sanctuary

09/20/2023

Holly will check in periodically and ask me who my favorite is, and I always tell her Aly is my special-special. She jokingly says, “you can change it if you want” (cause Aly’s the biggest bully) but the thing is you can’t. Once you pick a special-special you’re stuck with em forever. 🤗

08/07/2023

Do you have any extra hay bales you can spare for Ally? This girl sure loves to eat.

07/21/2023

When Holly filed for divorce her ex husband sent her a list of steps she should take to get her life back in order. It included not living with me, only keeping one horse, and getting a real job so she could stop being sucked into this pipe dream of a candle company.

To remember this wonderful list I put it on a candle from our company that will help build the house where we’ll live together and then went to pet all our horses.

👌🏻

Introducing Pipe Dream. They said it as an insult, we’re turning it into a mission. With every candle we’re $10 closer to housing our families, being financially independent women, and ending the generational poverty in our family.

This is a limited run of 350 candles in a limited scent of cypress pine and earth We’ve made it our goal to sell them all by the end of this weekend. We’re offering free shipping, and free local delivery. Thanks so much for all your support.

hivetohomecandleco.com

07/09/2023

I don’t know if it’s common knowledge that we own a candle company also. It’s the base of our bigger goals which include an on-site store, the farm, and lots of community interaction.

Last weekend we moved our workshop into the extra storage barn next to our builder’s house. Only 3 trips of essentials filling the backseat of the Tiguan; leaving the 10x40 storage unit still filled up to my head with extra inventory of jars, boxes, and disassembled shelving racks among the other chaos.

Going to work on Monday morning gave us a high. A feeling or normalcy in our completely strange life, but better. I forgot how much I loved my job.

We’ve spent years working late into the nights, always with 6 kids lingering around, needing more than we had the capacity to give. The 7th kid barely grown and holding the company together for us, while getting the degree none of us had the attention span or drive for at his age.

The thing I’ve learned about success stories are that you’re not admirable in the midst of the story; only at the end. When you learn how someone “made it” and then what it took, we’re in awe at how they sacrificed and held on. We already know it was worth it because we see the ending and we know they were right. In the middle of the story it’s not that easy. During the low points, you’re simply low. You’re labeled as lazy, or selfish, or foolish, or immature for chasing a dream while your reality is falling apart. No one knows your ending but they all know your current chapter seems a mess.

We’ve done cheap hotel craft shows and filled
$100,000 orders and lost it all and then came back stronger. The saying “success isn’t linear” is a description of our life. The end goal doesn’t change. Maybe that’s not true; maybe it grows.

If you’re able to help us out in this chapter consider donating to our GoFundMe campaign. All the money will go direct to our builder to cover material costs. If you’re not into donating we’d love nothing more than to be overworked filling more orders than we can handle.

GoFundMe.com/f/hive-to-home-candle-co

Pictured Below : Our new workspace at the Breckon home.

07/01/2023

This morning we loaded a flatbed trailer full of hay from right where it was baled and left in the field, dripping sweat along the way. The trailer and the truck pulling it both belonging to our builders, Ron Breckon and Mary Breckon. Their 4 little minions hopped out and 1 baby minion stayed in her car seat. Most of them weren’t big enough to lift a bale but they tried their hardest, and their dad lifted 2 at a time to make up for it.

The hay belonged to Judy Holtgrewe Bailey and her husband. After filling their barn with enough to last the year, they harvested the rest just for us, and didn’t charge us a thing as long as we collected it ourselves. This in itself is an act of kindness to the extreme but talking to Judy on the phone a few times and at her not so little homestead where she so proudly showed us around is the kind of thing that makes my heart happy.

We plan to keep visiting Judy and helping her do chores around her farm to give back a little of what she’s given to us.

06/30/2023

When we first went to meet Love it was in the winter, and he had a thick fuzzy coat with one longer patch of fur that stuck out far past the rest right between his eyes. His back leg had an open wound that just wouldn’t stayed healed because of the jagged ice and mud that was now frozen into rough terrain. When he would take a step he would swing his back leg up into the air, out to the side and far higher than would be normal or necessary; rocking it a few times before putting it back down. He moved slow and methodically. The injuries looked overwhelming, and intimidating, and we knew we could only take a limited number of horses. Holly wasn’t immediately convinced that he should be one of them and now I like to rub it in when she’s holding his sweet little head in her hands.

06/26/2023

Someone said to us today that the situation we are in is karma. Of course, they meant it in the negative. This suffering is our own doing. Payback from the universe.

Which is ironic to me, because I could never connect any of this to a punishment. We own 7 acres with beautiful animals and beautiful views, we have a huge family, and a business that is our own. We are surrounded by a group of people that make us feel worthy and loved.

Also, yes, it’s really fu***ng hard. Also, yes, sometimes it sucks.

But hard is sometimes what it takes. Hard isn’t a punishment or something we should run from. Hard doesn’t mean you’re going in the wrong direction, or that you’ve made the wrong choices. Hard is just something that you have to go through sometimes to get to the other side of what you want.

So far the money from our Go Fund Me account has paid for a soil erosion permit, and diesel fuel. Our building permit was submitted today and we will be putting up a silt fence tonight to keep the soil erosion people happy. We need a total of around $4,000 for materials to start the house( which we have about half of thanks to donations already), and another $3500 for gravel and dirt. If you can spare anything to help us we would so much appreciate it. (We’d also take some dirt or gravel donations if you have any😉😉)

gofundme.com/f/hive-to-home-candle-co

Pictured below: Remy at ”The Dust Bowl” aka our home, trying to camouflage a board in the dirt.

06/21/2023

We have over $2000 😱 and it’s mind blowing. This will pay for the permits being pulled and the start of excavation. We’ve opened a separate bank account to keep all the money donated for the house, so that it will go only towards the house. For 5 years I lived with my kids in a 565 sq. ft. rental. The $1000 rent being all I could afford. The 4 of us shared 2 8x10 rooms. No dishwasher, laundry, AC, or garage. Then we moved into Holly’s house last summer. After she divorced there was no way for her to make the mortgage payments without help. Holly and her son started sharing a room to make space for us and I shared a room with my two younger kids. Now we’re in the camper and Flora, my 5 year old has a trundle that slides under my bed. The only thing she keeps asking is if in the new house she can have a bed that is up off the floor and I have promised her that she will. 😌

Please consider reading and sharing our story with the link below if you haven’t done it yet. I hate to act desperate or ask for help, but it has been harder than anyone knows and that is the truth.

UPDATE: After reading this story our builder and his wife asked us for a meeting. Knowing what trul… Riley Kidder needs your support for The start of a home.

06/21/2023

UPDATE: This week we are overusing the word grateful until we can think of another perfect way to describe this. We are also trying to stay focused because the township came back today to check on the removal of all our animals. We haven’t removed them. We are not going to remove them. If you didn’t hear the beginning of that story I’ll share it again in another post. Now we are working with the Department of Agriculture on using the “Right to Farm” act to defend ourselves against Rutland Township in order to be able to keep our 6 rescued horses.

This however creates additional problems on our path to getting our business up and running and building our own home, because although the township officer who visited us today didn’t feel right giving us a ticket. Next time he comes out he will have to and the penalties only get more severe. We also have to acknowledge that it will be up to the township if they want to approve our building permits when we are in the midst of this battle with them.

So thank you so much to every one who donated, bought candles, and even offered supplies for the horses. S**t seems never ending, and in the middle of my crying last night 🤦🏼‍♀️ a donation came up on my email and it was that support that I needed to pull it together.

gofundme.com/f/hive-to-home-candle-co

06/20/2023

We set up a fan station for the horses and they’ve been here for hours. There is no joy like seeing Leroy’s little p**f ball of a forelock blowing in the breeze. 😊

06/08/2023

Welcome to the homestead Presser and Love. We decided with the very first horse that we wouldn’t rename any of em because we’re just here to continue their story and we’re not trying to make them into anything else. ♥️♥️

06/07/2023

We bought 7 acres of land to be able to give a home to the injured and old and issued horses that we’ve taken in. We chose a piece of land farther from town, with a long dirt drive into the woods that leads to another long dirt 2 track farther into the woods with a large pond separating us from the road. Their pasture backs up to 15 more acres of woods, and on the side more than 50 acres of hay field that goes unharvested. We have 2 neighbors a good distance away on the 4th side, the side farthest from the horses, and they are amazing, and like family to us. They send their daughter over to ride the littlest pony, they have checked on them for us, helped us build the fences, and get them water before we had the well. There is no one else around us. No one that can see us. Most people can’t even find our place the first time.

Yesterday, we were notified that someone had called the township and filed a complaint against us for having more animals than our acreage allows (which no one seems clear on the exact number allowed or acreage needed either), and now they’ve told us we have 2 weeks to remove all the animals. We have no idea who filed this complaint but it’s disturbed us because they knew all the details. They knew our street number even though we just got it and it hasn’t even been officially filed yet. They knew we had 4 horses and 2 goats although they aren’t visible to anyone, and the kicker, is that we made a last minute plan on Sunday night to pick up 2 horses at 9 the next morning and the person who made the complaint called an hour after we unloaded them and told the township that 2 new horses had been dropped off that day.

We have been working with the Michigan Department of Agriculture who will be defending us against the township based on the Michigan Right to Farm Act which gives Michigan residents the right to support and provide for their families through their land and animals. We have no intention to bring these horses anywhere. Ever. However, as usual someone is trying to make our lives harder, and hurt us by taking the things we love, and I only have two people in mind who would want to do that.

05/16/2023

Horse girls in training.

04/25/2023

When you said he was an escape artist Jessica Bach you weren’t kidding. 😅 We finally had to put this guy in the pen with the goats until we move because he just walks out of the pasture whenever he feels like it, and he feels like it a lot. 🤪

03/26/2023

Eating his warm oatmeal with a blanket on a terrible cold and wet day.

03/18/2023

Somebody had a small accident in the muddy sh*tty pasture.

03/10/2023

We bought a trailer!

03/09/2023

Does anyone local have about 4 bales of hay we can buy off you until we get our next shipment this weekend?

03/08/2023

Aly-Gator-Purse used to be a camp horse at the YMCA and I always think how it must have felt to be a kid and find out this 16.3 hand thoroughbred was your horse to ride. ❤️😬

03/07/2023

We’re super busy, running a family business, trying to move, keeping kids alive, and taking care of all the animals, but we did take a little time to get this started. We have 2 more horses waiting patiently to come live here, so we can’t wait to get to our new land and get set up. 👊🏻👊🏻

Also if anyone has any of these things… we are looking for a bot fly egg remover for Aly, dewormer, and another slow feeder hay bag.

02/27/2023

5 hours la-ter……..

The freezing rain felt like it would never end. The paddock flooded with ice cold water, and this guy couldn’t get out of it, so we brought him up onto the covered porch of the house and sat with him for hours. One time it seemed to let up and we put him back in the pasture only to have it start down pouring immediately after. We warmed towels in the dryer and covered him up to keep warm. At 27 years old and because he looks so cute, this guy deserves special care. He just arrived yesterday and we sure did get in some bonding time already.

02/27/2023

When it’s freezing rain and the gang won’t let new guy in the shelter.

02/26/2023

It’s Leroy!

02/26/2023

Sometimes I look at my dog, and think “she’s so lucky to have me.”

I know normally people would say that the other way around, but what I mean is, I know how much I love her and it’s a lot.

02/25/2023

Just over here googling how to potty train a pony.

02/25/2023

My nephew took these pics, and he said he didn’t get any good ones, but I think they’re pretty great.

02/25/2023

Since the day of our first post the messages haven’t stopped and our list of “broken” horses looking for a home keeps growing. We realized like, really fast that we were going to need more land to accommodate. So we started making a 2 year plan, cause that’s what reasonable people do. Within a week Holly’s ex husband demanded angrily that we sell their old home that we’ve been living in, so he could receive his payout from the divorce. So of course, that’s what we had to do.

We began the search for land, checking every day until a shady listing showed up on Craigslist. It wasn’t actually shady, but I just generally think Craigslist is shady. So while we had planned to visit a different property that day we made a last minute change of plans and went to this one. It felt perfect. We knew there were already several other people looking at it since options are limited in our district, so that night we wrote the seller a long letter, with an offer contingent on the sale of the house. They accepted with no counter, and told us they would remove the listing because they loved what we were doing, and wanted us to have it. It felt pretty meant to be even though I’m not usually a believer in meant to be things.

Next we busted our asses every day cleaning and fixing up the house and sold it within a week.

We will be paying cash for the land, however before we can build or bring over the horses, we will need to widen the private road to meet current ordinance standards. We aren’t sure of the total cost yet, but we are creating t-shirt and sweatshirt designs that will be available to purchase in hopes that we can fund this ASAP and get to some of the waiting list of horses and ponies!

02/25/2023

1 or 2

02/25/2023

Far too many horse people believe that desensitization and flooding are the same things, whether they admit that themselves or not.

Flooding is a mechanism of training in which the trainer seeks to try to desensitize the animal from a fear provoking stimulus by applying that stimulus at full intensity and continuing to do so until the animal stops reacting.

It is damaging to welfare because of the high stress nature of it and the fact that it actually doesn’t do anything to target the underlying fear, it just teaches the horse that they have absolutely no option of escape so should just cease to react.

The problem with this is that it can create a horse who is essentially a ticking time bomb. They mask their stress and go into frozen states around fearful stimuli, at which point they could explode into a frenzied reaction when the stress finally hits a threshold that is too uncomfortable to manage in a frozen state.

These are then the horses who explode “out of nowhere” or react to stimuli with a reaction that seems too big and out of character for what caused it. This is due to them masking such fear and stress for extended periods of time and then needing to release all of that energy when they are finally sent far enough over threshold that they need to physically release said energy with a flight response.

Desensitization, on the other hand, is introducing a fear provoking stimulus in small and palatable approximations so that you’re not inducing a fear response in the first place. You slowly build on the intensity of the stimulus as the horse gets more comfortable, so by the time you touch them with it, they’ve already let down most of their fear and can respond to that without reactivity.

Desensitization and flooding are not the same.

Systematic desensitization is all about remaining within the animal’s threshold of tolerance and not inducing a fear response in the first place.

Flooding is all about inducing that fear response and continuing to do it until the horse stops reacting.

Flooding is not necessary, productive, safe or ethical.

Systematic desensitization is necessary, productive, safe and ethical along with long lasting when it’s approached correctly.

Far too many self proclaimed professionals use flooding as a method of desensitization and try to frame their work as not being flooding, all the while using their perceived expertise as a professional to justify it.

I’m here to tell you that very few horse trainers in the professional field have the necessary behavioural education to make the sweeping claims they do.

It’s easy to claim you’re not flooding when you don’t have the faintest grasp of learning theory and behavioural science. You can’t understand something you’ve made no effort to learn, meaning it’s easy to deny the damage you’re doing when you don’t understand it.

We cannot blindly believe horse professionals’ perceptions of things simply because they’re professionals.

A lot of professionals are merely horse people who are paid to ride — they have no other credentials.

This is fine because even without other credentials, you can still do your homework and learn all of these things — but since they’re not required, many don’t.

So, the term “professional” on its own is not enough to claim someone knows what they’re talking about.

Until a firm grasp of learning theory and behavioural science is required to practice as a professional, we have to watch what trainers show us of their skills and training practices and judge their expertise off of that.

A trainer who cannot tell the difference between desensitization and flooding will never be someone who understands the science behind training.

We can all do better and be on a constant journey of self betterment but it starts with learning to recognize shortcomings.

02/24/2023

Thank you so so much to Kenzie Curtis who donated this horse blanket (along with lots of other great stuff) so Sparke can be cozy warm. 🥰

02/22/2023

I will forever talk to every animal like they are a toddler, give them ridiculous nicknames and make up songs about them.

02/22/2023

Nothing like the smell of hay. ❤️ Stocking up before the ice storm, and when I say stocking up I mean shoving a few bales in our SUV’s cause that’s all we have right now. 👌🏻 You gotta start somewhere.

02/18/2023

We have so much news to share but it’s a lot so I’m gonna write some things out and break it into parts! So grateful and excited for what’s to come.

02/15/2023

Meet Mr. Snow, he has some sore hoof issues because of some founder issues and has come here to live the easy life. His family was going through some changes and maybe moving, and didn’t want to wait until it was too late and be rushed to find him a good home. His white eyelashes and black eyes are my fav. 🦄

02/14/2023

We tried peanut butter on textured trays today, but Aly-Gator was not a fan. It’s hard to imagine that putting this 18 year old sweetie down was an option that was considered by the YMCA, but I also get that sometimes it seems like a better option than sending your horse off into a bad life and an un-rideable horse isn’t always easy to rehome.

02/13/2023

Sunny morning back scratches. We feel so grateful that we were able to give this horse and pony a home filled with lots of love and kisses.

Aly came from the YMCA. They sold her to us for $1.00 since an injury made her unsuitable to be a camp riding horse. She is a 16.3 hand thoroughbred, who we’ve already nicknamed “The Hulk” after she got scared in the trailer and straight up broke her lead rope in half like it was a piece of thread. However now that she’s home, Mr. Snow, who we’ve also taken in, has become her emotional support pony. She follows him every where and starts to panic if he walks behind the barn and she can’t see him. ❤️

02/12/2023

Aly’s home!

02/12/2023

“Hi, we’re here to get the horse, we just forgot to bring anything and suddenly forgot how to do everything.”

Thanks for helping us Alexandra. We promise we’re not idiots, we’re just nervous and excited and new to this. 😅

02/12/2023

It’s Aly-Gator day! (and Snow day 😉)

02/11/2023

We’re feeling super angry, and helpless at the moment. Turns out we won’t be able to get our bitchy horse from the neighbor, or at least we don’t know how right now. We had paid for part of her and we’re planning to give him the rest when we moved her over to our house, and we got to work on the barn and pasture. But when we didn’t have the cash the exact day he decided he wanted it, he told us it was too late and he would take her to auction. He threatens that because he knows she could be dangerous to anyone who comes to look at her, and it would be nearly impossible to sell her that way. He even said he didn’t care how much he got for her, because he was trying to teach us a lesson. He’s obviously mad at us for personal reasons, but it’s hard to fathom that someone would punish an animal as a way to get back at someone. I do not get it.