Donations help us to maintain and fund all the essential ancillary costs related to horses rescue.
While sponsoring a horse pays for the agistment, hay, feed, supplements and medicines and medical care of individual horses, your donation pays for the essential support infrastructure and services that make horse rescue possible.
This is how your donation is spent:
Your donation goes directly to the maintenance and replacement cost associated with running a first-aid veterinary clinic.
Running an onsite clinic is costly, but less costly than using external vet centres (although sometimes our excellent external vet facilities are required).
Using our own first-aid clinic keeps our vet bills as low as possible.
We often travel long distances to collect at-risk horses and fuel costs related to horse transport is sometimes equal to veterinary care for some horses.
Your gift goes directly to funding fuel and maintenance costs for vehicles used solely for transporting rescued horses.
We have a dedicated stable and yards where rescued horses are treated and brought back to life. The maintenance costs to keep the facility safe and efficient are high.
Your generous donation helps to keep the facility functioning and secure.
People and connection are at the heart of everything we do. Join Naturaliste Sanctuary as a volunteer and help support horses suffering abuse and neglect.
Your donation helps us to find and provide volunteers with the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding to train the incredible people who volunteer and spend hours helping horses in need.
If you feel you can make a donation, we have many ways to donate to horse rescue and recovery.
Choose between monthly giving, a fixed term monthly giving or a one-off donation. All funds go directly to horse care and recovery.
Allows you to make regular donations from your pay to through payroll donations and, because we hold Deductible Gift Recipient status, claim an immediate tax deduction.
Gifts in wills have a significant and long-lasting effect on rescuing and rehabilitating horses. These generous gifts allow us to future plan our activities, creating contingency funds for extended horse rescues.
We’re always in need of good quality rugs, halters, leads, travel boots, curry combs and brushes (oh and hoof picks. Ours seem to disappear like teaspoons in a dishwasher).
Your donation helps support our work with horses across Australia. Our aim is always to successfully rescue and rehabilitate every horse, pony, mule or donkey we take in and, ultimately, to give them a safe and permanent home at the Naturaliste Ethology Program.
No administration costs
All money donated goes directly to horse care, not administration costs. If you donate $50, that donation buys supplies and services associated with horse rescue.
We don’t engage in expensive marketing campaigns, go on fact finding junkets, pay consultants or hold expensive HR conferences. We keep our operating expenses low and fund our operating costs from sales of merchandise and fund raising activities, such as Harvest Days, so that donations go directly to horse rescue.
Volunteers are key
Our volunteer programs are designed to directly effect better outcomes for horses. Our project teams, many of which are volunteer staffed, work with local partner organisations and universities to achieve lasting improvements in equine welfare.
Lasting results
We work to improve the horse-human relationship, using our website, morning teas and education programs such as the Naturaliste Ethology Program to promote and implement horse fair practice and advance a better understanding of horse ethology.
None of this vital work would be possible without our generous supporters – your contribution today will help horses who need it the most.
Thank you for your consideration in supporting our work, we really do appreciate it.
Our sponsorship programs are fixed cost and all proceeds go directly to the intended cause. We do not subtract any administration overheads or operational cost from sponsorship funds.
Sponsoring a horse is an incredible way to have a real impact on the life of horses who have faced neglect, abuse and exploitation. Your sponsorship allows us to rescue, recover and rehabilitate at-risk horses and make them safe forever.
We’re on a mission to plant 8,000 trees across the culturally and ecologically important Naturaliste Habitat Corridor which provides habitat for endangered species and cleans the water running into ecologically important waterways.
..or at least a section of fence. Our wonderful volunteers install fence sections at both the Habitat Corridor and the Ethology program funded and built by your donations.
Sponsorships are available for the Naturaliste Sanctuary, Harvest Days, the Naturaliste Shed, the Habitat Corridor and Naturaliste Ethology. There’s also a Skills-based volunteer program. Contact us for more details.
Horses like Lucy rely on the Naturaliste Sanctuary to survive
But it’s only possible thanks to kind donations from people like you.
We first became aware of Lucy when she was advertised for sale as a fully shod, ride and drive pony, at only two years old. At that age, horses should not be ridden, pull a cart or have shoes on. It was obvious from the photographs of her in the advertisement that she was living in squalid conditions and was suffering from neglect.
Background
We decided to buy her and bring her to the Sanctuary. However, the advert then disappeared and we had the challenge of trying to track her down. A lady called Lucy (after whom we named horse Lucy) got in touch and told us that she had managed to buy her but that she was in a very bad way.
When we saw Lucy, she was covered in cuts and scrapes, with deep whip marks along her back, badly overgrown hooves (one of which was split) and her teeth were in poor condition from eating the wood in her stall, we assume from hunger. She was also struggling with her balance and her neck was bent to one side.
She flinched and tried to put her ears back if anyone went near her, but was too weak to put up an effective defence.
Collection
Our volunteer team immediately mobilised. Lucy (human Lucy) offered to transport little horse Lucy, but as we’re set up for emergency transport, our rescue volunteers arranged to collect her. We started the triage process immediately on receiving the photos of Lucy’s condition.
Lucy did an excellent job taking very detailed images of Lucy’s overall condition and her injuries. She also gave us a comprehensive assessment of observed behaviours which helped in the triage process.
Triage
By the time little horse Lucy arrived at the Sanctuary, we were set-up, ready to treat her. Our initial triage assessment had already been emailed to the vet and we had agreed on a list of treatment priorities, the first of which was to relieve any pain and alleviate discomfort.
(Warning: Graphic) Despicably, it was evident that Lucy had been forced to pull a cart by being whipped. Consequently, she had suffered various injuries to her neck and legs, probably as a result of falls. She even had injuries to her ears, the vet told us this was probably the result of being tied down by her ears to force shoes on her.
Poor Lucy was so demoralised and ill that she barely resisted the treatment. Her ears told us when the treatment was too much so we stopped and allowed her to breath and re-group.
The vet made his first onsite call a couple hours after she arrived at the Sanctuary to confirm our condition assessment and to agree next steps. The prognosis was grim.
Sponsorship
We agreed on a 90 day treatment plan and applied to our devoted and generous horse sponsor base for assistance. We had immediate offers for sponsorship from 3 incredibly generous and decent people! Lucy, human Lucy, stepped forward and offered to sponsor horse Lucy. We accepted on the spot.
Treatment
The first two weeks were touch and go. Lucy was shut down and withdrawn, accepting of most treatments but some, the farrier and the dentist, were done in stages as they were too distressing. Her appetite remained poor and we boosted her nutritional intake with IV supplements.
Fast forward 60 days and Lucy had been on stall rest because her balance was so poor. She was often visited by one of our “angel” geldings who knickered and allo-groomed with her. This contact seemed to help the healing process.
She remained head shy. The process of getting Lucy to trust us was, as you’d imagine, very slow, and she was nervous around people she doesn’t know (she still is).
Freedom
At day 61, the vet told us she was healthy enough to go into the paddock, so Lucy was set free. She zoomed around the paddock, bucking and running (didn’t last long, she was pretty unfit), she was so happy to be free!
Lucy has been permanently disabled by her experience so she can never be ridden and she continues to heal, but as far as we can ascertain, she is without pain or movement discomfort.
She has grown into a very lively horse with a big personality and, now that she’s well enough to live at the Ethology program, she’s a huge paddock favourite with friends in a number of the big bands.
The Naturaliste Group rescues at-risk horses and conducts horse welfare advocacy. We work to promote and protect horses across the full spectrum of the equine world, including horses in need from sport and leisure endeavours and horses used in the racing industry.
We contribute to helping solve the unwanted and abandoned animal issue within Australia through education and advocacy, strengthening the horse-human relationship using care, research, education and influence.
Located on the Naturaliste Coast, 250 km south of Perth, horses are rescued, rehabilitated and released into natural herds where they are used for ethological (behavioural) research.
All horse rescue, welfare and advocacy work are funded from profits generated by all Naturaliste Group entities:
Worried about a horse? If you’re concerned about a horse’s welfare, you can report this to us online. We’ll get back to you immediately.
