North Fort Myers Neighbor Living magazine: South West Florida Horse Rescue gives horses a second chance at life
What started as a private rescue operation on 5 acres in 2010, has since grown in size, both in the number of horses helped and the land to do so with a nonprofit status.
South West Florida Horse Rescue brings horses under its care if there is not a human currently responsible for them or if they have been seized due to mistreatment or neglect.
“We know we can’t save the world. Those that we can save we will provide the best quality we can possibly do,” South West Florida Horse Rescue Co-Founder and Director Matt Vanaleck said.
As of the beginning of March, the rescue off Babcock Ranch Road was caring for 15 horses. Each horse’s well-being dictates how long they have to stay at the rescue before they become adoptable.
“It’s not uncommon to expect them to stay here, at the earliest, for six months,” he said.
He said the horse being rideable is imperative for its future, as 99 percent of individuals who want to adopt want to ride the horse.
“Out of our 15 horses, that knocks out 11 right away. We have four rideable horses and that is it. They were stallions and no longer reproduce. They are still in the rehabilitating state and not yet available. I have zero horses ready to be ridden, ready to be adopted,” Vanaleck said.
Some of the horses that have cancer, COPD or massive arthritis while one has its tendons torn from jumping.
“We have had horses come in 400 to 100 pounds underweight,” Vanaleck said.
Before horses can be adopted, a veterinarian does evaluations and sends them through a professional training program with a bonafide trainer who can vouch if the horse can be ridden.
The adoption process takes three months, as the person who wants to adopt has to answer questions, have socialization visits at the facility and interact with the horse.
“We adopt local,” Vanaleck said. “We go off the premise of local, local, local.”
They have a two-strike rule of horses being returned to them. Only six have been returned
“Those returned were because of family issues,” he said, such as a family losing their property or other financial crisis. “Financially they were in trouble. We will bend over backwards for that horse to come back to our care.”
The last year the rescue took willingly owner surrenders was in 2017.
“We will aid and assist people who are willing to work with us. The result is what they put into it,” he said.
Some of that assistance is connecting someone who can no longer care for the horse with someone willing to adopt.
“We create a connection base for higher exposure for the person looking for a home for their horse,” he said.
Although running the organization can wear on your emotions and take a lot of time, Vanaleck said seeing the effective change on horses that were wronged by man at some point is the biggest reason he keeps going.
The biggest case they had was with a horse named Sammy who was 780 pounds, instead of 1,100. The rescue struggled with keeping him alive for the first month.
“I don’t have a favorite horse. The ones that I have a higher connection with are the ones I struggled with,” he said of feeding Sammy every two hours. “He recovered quite well. It’s remarkable to see him nowadays. When he would go down he couldn’t get back up. I would grab his pelvic bone to get him up. Now he lays down and gets back up. You can’t understand how that tickles your heart.”
History of South West Florida Horse Rescue
Vanaleck said he and founder Tina Garrett decided to begin rescuing two horses at a time, which quickly became three horses once they immersed themselves into that world.
“Three kind of put us at a limitation. We owned four personal horses at the time on five acres. That is why we chose to do two,” Vanaleck said, as one horse needs an acre of land.
The very first horse rescued was Jeannie who was in their care for roughly four months before they lost her to a staph infection in her leg.
“We really questioned if we were going to be a good horse rescue or not. We took a break for about six months,” he said.
The founders stumbled upon more horses that needed help when Garrett’s golf cart broke down near their property. There was a Paso Fino horse breeding farm with 50 horses, all “skeletons,” Vanaleck said. The man had been hit by the economic crash, he said.
“Over the course of four months we took 18 physical horses from that man. One was pregnant. This was by his admittance and allowance until he told us no more,” he said.
From there they began creating a footprint of a horse rescue and began a website.
“We started promoting what we were doing and trying to find homes for the horses. Out of 19, we were able to rehome all of them. The rest of the horses dealt with the sheriff’s department,” Vanaleck said.
With so many horses, and not a great deal of room on their own property, foster farms began with a total of seven from Golden Gate Estates to North Port.
“For the next two years we ran a foster program, while still maintaining operation at five acres,” Vanaleck said. “We sacrificed everything we had to keep it going.”
In 2012, fundraisers began to help support the rescue and the path to obtaining their nonprofit status began. He said a paralegal offered her services to file for a nonprofit and money was donated, as it was $1,000 to apply, money they used to buy feed for the horses.
Another blessing was provided after a private family foundation took an interest in their rescue, particularly Freedom, the baby that was born from the pregnant horse they rescued.
“Carol kept coming by and checking on Freedom. She was a horse person. A year later she had said ‘I am going to bring my husband. We want to help you out on a different wavelength, rather than feed and hay,'” Vanaleck said of the Fred & Jean Allegretti Foundation that provided a grant to establish a nonprofit facility. “We did not strive, or make any efforts to go that way. Things fell into place the way they did.”
In April 2014, they closed on their 40-acre State Road 31 property, which was 10 to 15 years unmaintained, as it was a prior golf course. A few years were spent on building the structures, fencing, add ons and adjustments.
A volunteer program began in 2016. Volunteers are a huge backbone to the success of the organization, which fluctuates in season.
“We teach people the process and through that process they learn by osmosis. They learn by senior volunteers who teach them processes of expectations in a given day,” Vanaleck said. “People come here willing, free and willing to provide their time and availability. Come when you want and go when you need during daylight operations.”
“There were good souls along the way that really helped out a lot with some advancements,” he said. “We are in a fluid form of an operation, 160 horses later and a volunteer program, sponsor program.”
The foundation continues to support South West Florida Horse Rescue, but now it is only about 10 percent of their budget, about $20,000 a year.
With a 40-acre facility, Vanaleck said their nominal number of horses is around 20 as Florida living for horses on one acre is not ideal since there is little but sand.
The land includes 12 paddocks, and 11 barns.
“We built our rescue two horses per paddock and not much more,” he said. “We operate at half the total land size. Five to 20 acres was plenty to focus on.”
Vanaleck said there are horse owners that have problems, such as financial, medical, no longer wanting a horse, which is not their emergency.
“You have to figure something out,” he said, adding that they will not take their problem right off their hands, as it will only happen again in a couple of years.
For more information or to make a donation visit swfhr.org. NFMNL
This story appears in the latest issue of the North Fort Myers Neighbor Living magazine, available at locations throughout North Fort Myers.
To reach MEGHAN BRADBURY, please email news@breezenewspapers.com