Community Equine Outreach of Eastern Washington

08/13/2024

After a rather eventful trip from Yakima to the Tri last night, Spirit and Miss Jeanette are settling in to their new foster. We're so happy to welcome Susan and her family to our CEOEW family! She spent day one connecting, gaining their trust, and acclimating them to new surroundings. Which they've taken to like champs!

A huge shout out to Heidi and Marv once again, the work done and the dedication given, made this possible.

Stay tuned for updates as these two are put through the 2nd leg of our RRR program!

As always we can't do what we do without you supporting us, so please consider donating as you can.

08/01/2024

This is a good read, as well as there being an educational webinar coming up.

07/30/2024

🎵I like big butts and I can not lie🎶 Jerry and Rose have zero interest in saying hello, sorry. They do have nice big butts though!
Our water main to the pasture blew out AGAIN. If you feel inclined to toss a few coins towards repair, the entire line needs dug up and heavier duty pipe layed so we don't experience this again. We have 6 rescue horses on our pasture that we have only been needing to feed once per day to keep them round. With this repair, we will have to go back to twice per day. Help?!

07/27/2024

Hello village. Unfortunately, it's back to the drawing board for an Eastern Washington foster for 2 of our latest intakes. Do you have room and a desire to be a leg in their journey? We supply feed, vetting, reimbursement for hauling. You provide love, care, and time. Hit us up if you're interested, we would love to hear from you!!

07/26/2024

With the fast moving fires we have in the gorge right now we understand it's hard to be fully prepared, and especially when relocating large animals. If you need help moving animals, and or need somewhere to go please call us here at the clinic. We have trucks and trailers available and places we can call to keep your pet comfortable durning this stressful time.
If you do have time to prepare here's a few reminders for your furry family members.
- Have carriers out and available.
- Check to make sure collars and tags are on.
- Have food and water dishes ready to go.
- Any medications your pets are on in a to go bag.
If you have large animals.
- Extra halters and lead ropes.
- Feed ready to go
-Enough hay to keep them busy for a while
-Water buckets
- Any medications

Stay safe, and thank you firefighters.

07/18/2024

Wow

07/17/2024

Hey friends, CEOEW is looking for a couple foster homes! Most specifically and fairly urgent is the need for foster for the 2 paints from Yakima. Our dear friend has been incredibly kind and gracious, but we knew going in that she and her sweet hubby were a temporary stop on their journey. CEOEW covers feed, vetting, the cost for hauling. You provide a safe, loving environment, and work with us as the horses go through our RRR program. We've accomplished the first R (RESCUE), a good start on the 2nd R (REHABILITATION), and have some work to do before we get to the 3rd R (REHOME). Do you have room in your life and heart? You will not regret it! Let us know!!

07/13/2024

Perspective. Well thought out and expressed.

"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‼️

07/07/2024

Although we don't advocate for riding in this heat, many do want or need to. Water is always crucial and having the knowledge to determine when, how much, temperature etc is necessary. We're sharing this article for informational purposes only.

A reader is looking for reassurance that letting a horse drink water after exercise is safe. Read what our expert says to ease her mind.
>>>https://bit.ly/EQDrinkingAfterWorking

07/05/2024

Thank you Jake Bennett for coming out and trimming for us! We appreciate you, especially in the heat.

07/04/2024

Happy Birthday to our nation! 🇺🇸 May God Bless you as you celebrate with friends & family, and may God Bless these United States of America!! ❤️
PSA: calories consumed at BBQ's don't count. 😁

06/30/2024

Spirit and Miss JaNette continue to relax and accept their fate of being loved on. Both are still wary, but seem to be thinkers. Dread locks were cut off due to the hazard they presented, and both are now talking to their foster Mom and Dad. (How sweet!!) They're being wormed via pellets and since it's food, it is consumed with gratitude.

If you are interested in helping these two in the journey to their bright future, please reach out! Spirit will require training, and Miss JaNette a soft place to land.

As always, we can't do what we do without you! Please consider a financial gift of any size. A huge thank you to our foster family, and to those who have helped thus far. We appreciate you! ❤️

06/24/2024

Oh.my.goodness! THIS guys, THIS is our why...please read the below update from Spirit and Miss JaNette's foster family today.

"Breakthru today:) First I was nickered at when I went outside this afternoon, then for the first time, Momma was open to some good neck rubs and attention. She has shunned it before but tonight stood there for a long time, he stayed back from her face but she surely liked it on neck and withers!"

How WONDERFUL ❤️

We are so blessed by fosters who do the hard work gaining trust and rehabilitating.

Spirit has been so wary, but appears to have a jealous streak and needed some loving too.

Big little victories!!

06/22/2024

Love this.

We see a lot of information on trailer loading but judging by how the parents were pulling in to the parking lot for a 4H clinic I was teaching, I got to wondering if there shouldn’t be a discussion on how to haul? The dust was flying, trailers were rattling and you could hear horses scrambling as they pulled up. Clearly, this called for drastic measures!

Despite reading and being told, there’s nothing like “learning to do by doing” – and pulling a trailer is no exception.

Before getting underway, I suggested they all tie their horses someplace safe before climbing in my trailer for a free ride. The arena was on a quiet country road and the locale made it possible for us to have a short, albeit illegal, journey. I asked the parents to stand in the slant haul without hanging on, just bracing themselves to take whatever came their way. Easy, right?

When we pulled back into the yard, they were horrified! First, the trailer, while a good make and recent model, was dusty on the gravel when the windows were open; it was also surprisingly noisy. They could hardly talk amongst each other, let alone think. When I accelerated, they were thrown backwards. Braking had them hitting the front dividers. Then, I purposefully braked while negotiating a curve. Chaos – and all the while, I’d not exceeded 50 kilometres (or 30 miles) per hour!

Back at the arena, I had the parents climb into one of their own stock trailers. This was worse, because it was windy, rattly and a bit rank, as it hadn’t been cleaned out in eons. The fumes of the built up manure gave them watery eyes. In the roomy stock trailer, whenever they lost their balance, they staggered in a pile on top of themselves. Clearly, there was more to this hauling than they’d bargained on.

We agreed the miracle is that so many horses load willingly when their owners have so little regard for what hauling entails.

So, where to begin? First, make sure the tail isn’t wagging the dog. Being able to accelerate with a full load doesn’t mean that your truck will be able to stop! Reckoning the weight of the trailer must also include the maximum number of horses, along with all that you’ve got in your tack room.

Do you know where to put your horses for the safest hauling? When asked, few drivers seem aware that the load goes at the front of the trailer, not balanced over the axles or behind them. By putting the weight on the towing vehicle, it greatly reduces a trailer's tendency to fish-tail, even in high winds. The lighter horses will be loaded after the heavier ones to stabilize the load.

With so many highways allowing speeds in excess of 110 kilometres (about 70 miles) per hour, you'll need to keep a lot of room in front to stay out of trouble. Are your mirrors adequate to see around your vehicle with a minimum of blind spots? Do you even know where your blind spots are? Have you adjusted your trailer brakes to help stop your load?

Do you perform a visual inspection of running lights, brake lights, turning signals and emergency flashers before you hit the highway? Have you made sure your trailer is towing level from front to back? When was your trailer last booked in for maintenance of the wiring, floorboards, tire wear and bearings?

Do you clean out your trailer after every single haul?

Now, practice pulling the unit with a handful of change thrown on the truck dash. You should be able to accelerate, turn and slow down to a stop without the coins sliding around. Deceleration is made smoother with the truck engine helping to brake the load, either with the transmission set to tow/haul, or by manually shifting (yes, even an automatic) down to reduce the forward momentum. This takes practice and knowing your vehicle.

Slow down before and not during turns; wait until your trailer has made the turn before smoothly speeding up. If your horses are scrambling, if you feel them moving around back there, you’re being too abrupt. Letting the greater pressure off the brake pedal a snick after you’ve stopped will absorb much of the force of stopping.

Learn how to back your trailer!

When I was a teenager, so keen to haul myself to shows, my father forbade me to go on my own until I could prove that I could handle it. This meant being able to back into any place that I could pull into (and yes, you can back into a lot of places you can’t make a forward turn). It always surprises me, the number of people hauling to weekend shows who need help parking their trailers.

Looking back, I’ve never had a horse that was hard to load. I’ve bought a few that came that way but with love and rules, along with good riding, they very quickly got better. I like to think that keeping my trailer clean and my driving mindful have had a lot to do with this.

Here’s to a long, safe summer for all of us... with only nice, smooth trips!

***

For more posts, fellowship and good information, why not follow our Keystone Equine page?

06/19/2024

Guys, these 2 are so hungry! They've had their heads buried in the feeder since bringing them in to our RRR program!! Foster Mom and Dad are working to gain their trust, and due to their patience the old gal took a piece of carrot yesterday 🎉
Neither have been worked with in YEARS. Spirit, at 16 hasn't had any formal training at all and Miss JeNette has only known neglect for those 16 years. It is obvious that she has an abusive past sadly and only with time and patience will she realize she is covered now with love and CARE in our program. We will be making individual albums for both moving forward as they will have futures unique to each. PLEASE, if you can, continue to support us as this is not a quick fix and go, and we do have others in our program we also support. Anything helps!

If you would like to donate via:
Venmo
Paypal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=6JTLFST6KUZSQ
And of course via usps to
5581 Langford Road
Mesa WA 99343

**if you would like to volunteer, please reach out!* We always need fosters, groomers, manure management, trainers, web managers, etc

06/14/2024

Some people may wonder what our philosophy is, so let me explain. We are a service organization. We're here to help. Keeping horses safe, cared for, out of the slaughter pipeline etc. That doesn't always look the same. Each situation is different. We educate owners where we can, we may evaluate feed programs and offer suggestions, we may offer an ear, a shoulder, and help with humane euthanasia, we may take an owner relinquishment into our RRR program(Rescue, Rehabilitate, Rehome), we may work with law enforcement in neglect cases, we may offer quarantine for a feedlot horse. All of those various prongs, and more, of our organization together make up who we are. We're not high drama, throw owners under the bus, only taking the worst of the worst for attention and donations...we are just quietly doing what we can to make the world a better place. Sometimes it's big, we've done big things. But mostly it isn't. We are small but mighty! The fact that our supporters stay with us, offering encouragement as well as funding means the world to us and to the horses that we advocate for and care for.

So yes, we educated the owner of the Yakima horses. Mistakes were made and a lesson learned. We don't need to shame the owner publicly. Perhaps that owner can now share their experience and help others. If they would have been jerks, trust me that the education they received would have been far more relevant to their attitude. But again, the key word is educate.

I hope this helps as you see our posts and wonder. My number is ALWAYS available for feedback, and engagement with us is encouraged.
Laura, Co-Founder and President

06/14/2024

We got them guys! Let me just say that our volunteers go above and beyond for horses in need!! It was a hot, dry, sweaty bunch of work for our heroes to get the 2 horses loaded and haltered, but by golly it got done. They're now settling in at their foster home and we will be making a plan to move them through assessment and rehabilitation asap. Please, if you can, consider sending a donation to help support our efforts via Paypal

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=4GMGWY34UBZJN

Venmo

Or via check to 5581 Langford Road, Mesa WA 99343

06/13/2024

Just asking for prayers and good thoughts that pick up goes well for the new intakes today?!

06/12/2024

Please consider supporting our efforts in the rescue, rehabilitation, and rehoming of the 2 paints we worked with Yakima Animal Control, and in collaboration with other rescuers to bring in to our already full program? We can't do what we do without you.

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=UBH3WAAGTVC6C

Venmo:

Help support Community Equine Outreach of Eastern Washington by donating or sharing with your friends.

06/09/2024

It would be so helpful if we could find a hoof stand that someone wasn't using any longer for a decent price or by donation. We wouldn't turn away any other farrier supplies either. Just needs to be useful, not fancy.

06/08/2024

A couple more photos of the 2 new program horses. They'll be coming in next week when our foster home opens up. They will need immediate care, can you help?

Estimated immediatel costs:
Hauling $200.00
Veterinary exam/vaccination/fecal $250.00 x 2
Hay $500.00
Senior/special feed $150.00
Farrier $80.00 x 2

And this is just to get started on their rehab. Both will need dentals, and the younger one has had no training. We'll need to invest volunteer hours just getting those fairy knots out of the old girls mane!

Please, can you help is get the fund healthy for their intake? Any amount helps!

Venmo is
Paypal is
USPS is 5581 Langford Road, Mesa, WA 99343

We can't do what we do without you. Much gratitude for those who've contributed, shared, prayed, sent us good thoughts so far. We appreciate you!

06/05/2024

Being able to work with Animal Control in Yakima County has been a pleasure. Being able to help someone who needs help, is why we exist. Being able to call on our amazing network to step up when we are beyond capacity in order to do so is the greatest gift.

Nette and Spirit are the 2 deserving beauties that will need hauled, fed, vetted, and farrier work. Can you help us financially or with a leg of their journey to safety?

Please reach out to Laura via DM or 509-222-8994.

Donate:

Venmo:

Paypal:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=NLD3VWMFL54EQ

Once they are in our custody, we will post pictures and provide updates as they move through our RRR program.

CEOEW is a 501c3 non-profit organization

05/06/2024

We're so proud of our member and "resident" trainer, Jess. She and her handsome guy epitomize the why behind what we do! Congratulations!!
❤️🦄❤️🦄❤️

05/04/2024

Thank you for those who participated in our $5.00 Friday!! You make a difference and are appreciated. ❤️ If anyone is looking for us, we'll be out grooming before the rain arrives. This image is a perfect illustration. 😂
Have a wonderful day!

05/03/2024

Stella would like to alert her fans that hay is coming Saturday so we're having $5.00 Friday to prepare. Venmo
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8UGS9Z97E6QLQ

check 5581 Langford Road Mesa WA 98343

Thank you!

05/02/2024

It's Gotcha Day for Emma!! Kacy has been an active member and foster for our organization for a few years now. How WONDERFUL to be able to announce the foster fail and adoption of Emma in to her sweet family! We don't always know what will touch our hearts so deeply we can't let go but for Emma and Kacy, it's beautiful. May you have many, many years of loving partnership Kacy and Emma!!