Gods Grace Animal Rescue

07/21/2024

This cute girl is looking for her forever home. She is a beautiful sweet girl.

07/21/2024

How cute is Ezekiel? I can’t believe he hasn’t found a home yet! He is a 10 mo small standard donkey c**t. Already castrated.

07/19/2024

We are in need of square bales. Our regular hay guy has had some mechanical issues and hasn’t been able to get us hay. Let me know if you have any leads.

07/15/2024

07/15/2024

Watermelon is a good treat on a hot day

07/15/2024

❤️❤️ So true!

I read this about farm work, most of us have been there…

“Farm work doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you anything. It reveals you.
There’s gym strong and then there’s farm strong. They’re mutually exclusive.
The toughest women you’ll ever meet spend their days on a farm.
There are more uses for twine than you can possibly imagine. You can tie up a hole in a slow feeder, fashion a tail strap for a horse’s blanket, mend a broken fence and use it as a belt.
“Well that certainly didn’t go as planned,” is one thing you’ll say quite a bit.
Control is a mere illusion. The thought that you have any, at any given time, is utterly false.
Sometimes sleep is a luxury. So are lunch and dinner. And brushing your hair.
If you’ve never felt your obliques contract, then you’ve never tried stopping an overly full wheelbarrow of manure from tipping over sideways. Trust me, you’ll find muscles that you never knew existed on the human skeleton to prevent this from happening.
When one of the animals is ill, you’ll go to heroic lengths to minimize their discomfort.
Their needs come first. In summer heat and coldest winter days. Clean water, clean bed, and plenty of feed. Before you have your first meal, they all eat.
When you lose one of them, even though you know that day is inevitable, you still feel sadness, angst and emotional pain from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And it’s a heaviness that lingers even though you must regroup and press on.
You’ll cry a lot. But you’ll never live more fully. You’ll remain present no matter what because you must. There is no other option.
You’ll ask for so many miracles and hold out hope until the very last.
You will, at least once, face-plant in the manure pile.
You’ll find yourself saying things like, “we have maybe twenty minutes of daylight left to git ‘er done” whilst gazing up at a nonspecific place in the sky.
You’ll become weirdly obsessive about the weather.
You’ll go out in public wearing filthy clothes and smelling of dirt, sweat and p**p. People will look at you sideways and krinkle their noses but you won’t care.
Your entire day can derail within ten seconds of the rising sun.
You can wash your coveralls. They won’t look any cleaner, but they will smell much nicer.
Farm work is difficult in its simplicity.
You’ll always notice just how beautiful sunrises and sunsets really are.
Should you ever have the opportunity to work on a farm, take the chance! You will never do anything more satisfying in your entire life.
Well, that about sums it up, folks!” - author unknown

Picture of Cesar trying to get into my car.

07/14/2024

Tanya getting some love from Lily (my personal goat) and Daisy the rescue baby.

07/13/2024

Ezekiel was a bad beggar today lol. Esther has taught him all the tricks. He is so sweet and gentle when he takes a snack.

07/13/2024

Daisy has decided that Lily is her momma and hangs out with her all day, even sleeps on her. She is up for adoption, she will need another goat for companion, preferably a kid, or a very sweet doe.

07/11/2024

This beautiful little doe is going to be looking for her forever home also. She was owner surrendered to us and is a sweet girl. She was born around March of this year. She is going to do best with another young goat friend. And just look at those sparkling blue eyes! She is a little shy right now but is coming around quickly. It’s just her adjustment period to the new place

07/11/2024

Ezekiel is a 10 mo standard gelded jack. He was recently castrated and is ready to start looking for his forever home. He is the one on the right left as you look at the screen. Our permanent, Esther is on the right. If you are interested in him please message the page. He really is the sweetest boy

07/11/2024

"New Home Syndrome"🤓

I am coining this term to bring recognition, respect, and understanding to what happens to horses when they move homes. This situation involves removing them from an environment and set of routines they have become familiar with, and placing them somewhere completely different with new people and different ways of doing things.

Why call it a syndrome?

Well, really it is! A syndrome is a term used to describe a set of symptoms that consistently occur together and can be tied to certain factors such as infections, genetic predispositions, conditions, or environmental influences. It is also used when the exact cause of the symptoms is not fully understood or when it is not connected with a well-defined disease. In this case, "New Home Syndrome" is connected to a horse being placed in a new home where its entire world changes, leading to psychological and physiological impacts. While it might be transient, the ramifications can be significant for both the horse and anyone handling or riding it.

Let me explain...

Think about how good it feels to get home after a busy day. How comfortable your favourite clothes are, how well you sleep in your own bed compared to a strange bed, and how you can really relax at home. This is because home is safe and familiar. At home, the part of you that keeps an eye out for potential danger turns down to a low setting. It does this because home is your safe place (and if it is not, this blog will also explain why a lack of a safe place is detrimental).

Therefore, the first symptom of horses experiencing "New Home Syndrome" is being unsettled, prone to anxiety, or difficult behaviour. If you have owned them before you moved them, you struggle to recognise your horse, feeling as if your horse has been replaced by a frustrating version. If the horse is new to you, you might wonder if you were conned, if the horse was drugged when you rode it, or if you were lied to about the horse's true nature.

A horse with "New Home Syndrome" will be a stressed version of itself, on high alert, with a drastically reduced ability to cope. Horses don't handle change like humans do. If you appreciate the comfort of your own home and how you can relax there, you should be able to understand what the horse is experiencing.

Respecting that horses interpret and process their environments differently from us helps in understanding why your horse is being frustrating and recognising that there is a good chance you were not lied to or that the horse was not drugged.

Horses have survived through evolution by being highly aware of their environments. Change is a significant challenge for them because they notice the slightest differences, not just visually but also through sound, smell, feel, and other senses. Humans generalise and categorise, making it easy for us to navigate familiar environments like shopping centres. Horses do not generalise in the same way; everything new is different to them, and they need proof of safety before they can habituate and feel secure. When their entire world changes, it is deeply stressful.

They struggle to sleep until they feel safe, leading to sleep deprivation and increased difficulty.

But there is more...

Not only do you find comfort in your home environment and your nervous system downregulates, but you also find comfort in routines. Routines are habits, and habits are easy. When a routine changes or something has to be navigated differently, things get difficult. For example, my local supermarket is undergoing renovations. After four years of shopping there, it is extremely frustrating to have to work out where everything is now. Every day it gets moved due to the store being refitted section by section. This annoyance is shared by other shoppers and even the staff.

So, consider the horse. Not only are they confronted with the challenge of figuring out whether they are safe in all aspects of their new home while being sleep deprived, but every single routine and encounter is different. Then, their owner or new owner starts getting critical and concerned because the horse suddenly seems untrained or difficult. The horse they thought they owned or bought is not meeting their expectations, leading to conflict, resistance, explosiveness, hypersensitivity, and frustration.

The horse acts as if it knows little because it is stressed and because the routines and habits it has learned have disappeared. If you are a new human for the horse, you feel, move, and communicate differently from what it is used to. The way you hold the reins, your body movements in the saddle, the position of your leg – every single routine of communication between horse and person is now different. I explain to people that when you get a new horse, you have to imprint yourself and your way of communicating onto the horse. You have to introduce yourself and take the time to spell out your cues so that they get to know you.

Therefore, when you move a horse to a new home or get a new horse, your horse will go through a phase called "New Home Syndrome," and it will be significant for them. Appreciating this helps them get through it because they are incredible and can succeed. The more you understand and help the horse learn it is safe in its new environment and navigate the new routines and habits you introduce, the faster "New Home Syndrome" will pass.
"New Home Syndrome" will be prevalent in a horse’s life until they have learned to trust the safety of the environment (and all that entails) and the humans they meet and interact with. With strategic and understanding approaches, this may take weeks, and their nervous systems will start downgrading their high alert status. However, for some horses, it can take a couple of years to fully feel at ease in their new home.

So, next time you move your horse or acquire a new horse and it starts behaving erratically or being difficult, it is not being "stupid", you might not have been lied to or the horse "drugged" - your horse is just experiencing an episode of understandable "New Home Syndrome." And you can help this.❤

I would be grateful if you could please share, this reality for horses needs to be better appreciated ❤
‼️When I say SHARE that does not mean plagiarise my work…it is seriously not cool to copy and paste these words and make out you have written it yourself‼️

07/10/2024

Close your eyes and image yourself in a relationship...
Within this relationship you have no voice..
Maybe it’s your first one, or maybe the 10th one...
You meet and immediately you are told where you will live, where you will work, how you will exercise and who you will be friends with... if anyone.
When you try and express that you are fearful of the uncertainty, confused about the new life, and worried no one will ever hear you again... you are met with more directions... over and over... with no time to process or time to be still and be heard...
Imagine living day after day... walking on eggshells, not knowing what our partner will be like that day... often they use you as a means to feel better, dumping all the stress from their job and life on you.. projecting all their insecurities and short comings right into you... blaming you for not being a better listener... even saying you are a jerk, stubborn, and even calling you stupid...
How do you cope with this? Do you shut down and stop trying?... do you try and run away, are you frozen in fear and anxiety, so much so that you are triggered by what seems to be “nothing”...and “out of nowhere”?
None of this is anywhere near a healthy partnership, yet it’s where we expect our horses to live everyday...
These animals are gifts, accountability partners, and their behaviors and desperate attempts to communicate are a clear mirror to what is happening for us internally... they do not judge, they forgive constantly and love unconditionally... and when they don’t they are labeled as “problem”
It’s time to take responsibility for our side of the relationship... they have no choice in this game, the least we can do is practice a little patience and empathy... manage our own emotions so they don’t have to navigate that energy... .
It’s my belief that they are here to support us in our growth, hold us accountable and teach us the virtues we came here to embody... .
It’s time to get present with them... it’s time to stop taking their offerings for granted ❤️

Pic of a previous rescue, Spirit and his forever momma at an event.

07/02/2024

07/02/2024

07/02/2024

We have a familiar face back at the rescue. Well he’s already adopted again. Henry”s adopter was no longer able to keep him so he came back to the rescue. We always take our animals back at any point in their lives. Henry is one lucky dude and his foster momma said “I want to adopt him”. So he went straight to her house and nuzzled back up to his buddy Jada. Sometimes thinks happen in perfect timing.

07/02/2024

I spy a new little friend at the rescue. This little girl was an owner surrender and will be looking for her forever home after quarantine. She is super sweet and needs a name!

06/30/2024

We were getting ready to pack up at the event today and Zach decided to take a nap. I walked over and sat next to him on the ground, which he has never allowed. He leaned over and I started scratching his neck and under his chin. He actually wrapped his head around me and gave me a hug. He is normally affectionate with me but never this much. I soaked in every minute with this sweet boy.

06/29/2024

Had so much fun today

06/29/2024

At a foster family event. We believe in giving back to the community. Watching the kids enjoy the animals.

06/22/2024

Happy rescue day Zach! He was so tiny and scared when I brought him home that night. Look what a handsome sweet boy he has become. He is quite a character and a rescue favorite. He is a sanctuary animal here and his become our mascot. Everyone loves Zach!

06/19/2024

Little update on Rose, she is living the dream with her little girl. Every horse deserves at least once in their lifetime to be loved by a little girl. These photos make my heart happy

06/15/2024

We are in desperate need of a foster or adopter for 4 different pigs that are being returned. If you are interested please message me. Know that one is a farm hog, the other 3 are potbellies.

06/13/2024

It’s farrier day at the rescue! Esther is good as gold for her trims

06/09/2024

For those that don’t know Cesar is a permanent resident of the rescue. He enjoys following me around the property. Today he snuck thru the electric fence and when I walked towards him this was his reaction. lol

06/09/2024

Esther decided to stand inside the hay ring today. Naughty. Ezekiel is right next to her.

06/08/2024