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Thread: Cruzan Cowgirls Horse Rescue

  1. #1
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    Cruzan Cowgirls Horse Rescue

    So my wife and I run a horse rescue, on a little island in the Caribbean (ST Croix, USVI).

    We moved here in 2013, in an attempt to escape the cold of Alaska. It was never our intention to start a horse rescue, it just sort of happened. I purchased a home in August of 2013 and we got our first horse (Fox), a birthday present from me to my wife:


    Horses, culturally in this location, are for men. Women do not ride horses down here (nor are they even interested in them) and my wife quickly became well known and dubbed "the white lady that rides horses". We started to get interaction from some of the island horse owners, the horse owner community down here is smaller than it seems for the amount of horses on the island but very passionate about it. We started to get semi regular visits with questions about medical care, feeding, and riding techniques & general horsemanship. By November of that year we had over 10 horses, most were either surrendered to us by their owners or we "bought" them (anywhere from 100 - 300) from owners that were having difficulty keeping them healthy and we went decided we had to do something or we couldn't continue to feed all these horses.

    So we started a business to pay for the rescue expenses: www.cruzancowgirls.com which provides guided tours by horse back with the rescues that we have trained enough to be allowed near tourists.

    It's been a blur since then, and I'm not trying to type too large of a wall of text, but that's the "how it started" basics.

    When all this started, I don't think I fully understood what having the word "rescue" associated with us meant.. haha we are now the 911 for large animal issues on the island (we do work with 1 officer that handles animal abuse issues, but for hte most part we try to settle things out side of the legal system).

    Here's one of the calls we responded to a while back (we also "maintain" (ok, at least have) a lot of social media, since it's free advertisement):

    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeywyJenFkc


    Yesterday we got another call, we've been at this for a good 3 years now so there's a lot of familiar faces.

    The area we got called to had some pretty fuzzy reports initially (people who don't know much about horses trying to explain what is going on with a horse) but it sounded like there was a mare that was either having a difficult time with labor, or was suffering from colic (which can quickly kill a horse, and look a bit like labor if you're unfamiliar). My wife was busy on a tour so I drove out to see what the situation was (took my son and daughter, since my daughter is probably better with horses than I am at 13 years old... haha).

    When we arrived the mare was laying down and was sweaty, obviously having a hard time, she looked like she had fallen on asphault at a run, or was hit by a car in the near past as a lot of hair was rubbed off the side of her face and back hip, but they were old injuries and didn't concern me too much, she was healthy looking (nice and fat, not under fed) so that was good too.

    At first I thought for sure it was colic, it was very difficult to get her to stand up and almost nothing I did would get her to do more than roll from side to side, the owners of the horse (two boys 12 and 14) splashed water on her and she stood up immediately (they said "she hate wata" haha, good to know!). I already knew these boys (we call them "the twins") as we had to help them out with a horse previously (one we still take care of):


    After she stood up I could tell she was clearly in labor (swollen vagina, obvious contractions every 3-4 min) but she didn't have any milk (which can mean a variety of things). So I could tell I was in over my head and we informed the lady who's property the horse was on (who initially called us) that my wife would come back for a followup in a few hours.

    So I took my kids home and when my wife got back from the tour we loaded up some medical supplies (my wife's best friend, who's also a Vet Tech lives with us, and she of course went as well). After checking on the mother they quickly determined that this was a still birth situation with possible complications (couldn't find a second heart beat with a stethoscope).

    Now if you've ever dealt with large animals... you know it's about get messy.... haha.

    So since the mother had been struggling like this for over 12 hours, we decided that intervention was needed; after reaching into the birth canal we could tell that the baby was not presenting correctly, it's head was tucked down and under and its legs were not in the correct position, but it had already advanced quite a ways down the birth canal. So, we tried to push the baby back and try to re position... but horses are really big, and my wife was shoulder deep in this mare and couldn't get the head into the right position...

    By this point we had a crowd of about 12 people just "watching", we sort of looked at each other, "what do we do now?" the baby HAS to be pushed back to re position. So my wife asks her friend "what if i use my leg".. haha I just started laughing, why not? So now my wife has her leg in the birth canal of this horse all the way up past her knee and finally we get the baby re positioned, the head is facing forward like it should be but the legs are not working as they are suppose to, we had to wrap string around the baby and pull it out (at this point the mare was too drugged to do any pushing) and we finally got the baby out.

    Both front and back legs were deformed and most the joints had fused, that's why there was so much difficulty with the Labor. Which is kind of fascinating since deformed horses are super rare. This mare definitely would have not made it with out help.


    Hell of a Saturday evening, we finished up right as the sun set and went home to wash the various fluids off.


    I'm starting a thread because this kind of craziness happens way too often, I don't know how many of these little incidents I've already let slip out of the memory banks. So expect more animal adventures to follow.


    The top picture of Fox (now dead, random heart attack ) is the father of the baby horse we are currently caring for with a large hole in it's abdominal cavity (we've performed surgery twice on him so far).

    More to follow on that....
    Last edited by TargeT, 9th April 2017 at 19:35.

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  3. #2
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    Anyone who loves animals as much as you do, is a wonderful human being. The next time I'm in St. Croix, I'll be taking one of your guided tours!!!

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    Has 'the white lady who rides horses' caused any new trends with local women starting to ride or wanting to learn?

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    Quote Originally posted by GCS1103 View Post
    Anyone who loves animals as much as you do, is a wonderful human being. The next time I'm in St. Croix, I'll be taking one of your guided tours!!!
    Look us up for sure! we know all the great restaurants and places to check out (well, most anyway). We had a visitor from that "other forum" not to long ago & it was a lot of fun, placing a screen name to an actual person.

    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    Has 'the white lady who rides horses' caused any new trends with local women starting to ride or wanting to learn?
    We are an extreme minority down here, I think something like 8% white; which shouldn't matter but it does. It's hard to get "into" the local communities and not be seen as just an "oddity"; and besides that we mostly work with younger individuals and mostly from the projects. The older horse owners take their horses to the local horse race track & we are trying different routes when dealing with that class of horse owners (much less receptive to outside opinions, they have money and can afford their own medical care for the most part etc..).

    Our goals are to educate the local horse owner population and start trends that are "pro horse" (like not tying them to a tree with a rope around their neck.. etc..). That's enough "social shift" for us at this point, if we tried to change the culture here; that would be quite the undertaking indeed, too ambitious for me.

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    In the BVI we saw HUGE hermit crabs. They would scavenge on the beach after dark. They were big enough to make a meal and I asked one of our guides about it. He said, "We don't eat those. Well, they do over on that one small island, but they're the only ones and we think they're weird." Those people on the small island are locals, too. Island to island cultural variation.

    It's like that in Alaska, too.

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  11. #6
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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    It's like that in Alaska, too.
    It is very much like alaska, and in fact; we just keep meeting people from up there (though only once people we actually knew while living in AK). it seems like these two extremes attract the same types of people.

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    I recently learned how to weld, I thought it would be a highly useful skill given my situation and ambitions.

    Here is my first real project for the horse rescue... fixing a VERY Jerry rigged "gate" on one of our pens.

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    Wait, are you still working in flip flops? Maybe some kind of island thing?

    It's worth the time you spend editing, imo. It's really good. Some things are fun to watch sped up. The narration is friendly and substantive.

    Oh, and, nice gate.
    Last edited by Dreamtimer, 27th April 2017 at 06:31.

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    Thank you for what you and your wife are doing. My granddaddy told me once when I was a kid, "most people that have horses, really have no business owning them". Back then, I didn't really know what he meant. Today, I know all too well.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    Wait, are you still working in flip flops? Maybe some kind of island thing?

    It's worth the time you spend editing, imo. It's really good. Some things are fun to watch sped up. The narration is friendly and substantive.

    Oh, and, nice gate.
    Haha, it was 85-80* during all of that video & I think I'm a very "northern" blood line, I'm always pretty hot down here, plus I'm not afraid of a burn or two (and frankly... I don't own much foot ware aside from flipflops anymore, maybe 1 pair of pants... haha)

    The one big mistake I made was no eye protection while grinding, that's bad.. I think I'll put a notation on the video to that effect, don't want to be a bad example!



    Quote Originally posted by jsb_swampfox View Post
    Thank you for what you and your wife are doing. My granddaddy told me once when I was a kid, "most people that have horses, really have no business owning them". Back then, I didn't really know what he meant. Today, I know all too well.
    I don't understand how people can F it up so bad, I have 36 ( i think?... haha) horses right now and, yeah, it's a bit of work.. but if you only had two ?

    The biggest thing I've learned is the mentality of the horses and how to work with their mind sets... basically every time something bad happens around a horse it's the human's fault, horses are very expressive if you know their language.

    I've only been working with horses for about 4 years now, so I'm sure I still have a lot to learn.

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    I have a friend who has horses. The horse people surrounding her are more often than not, doing something bad or very questionable. They cheat each other whether it's over hay, the cost of a horse, shoe-ing, or God knows what. I don't know if it's the money or what, but there are so many shady people when it comes to horses. It's amazing.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    I have a friend who has horses. The horse people surrounding her are more often than not, doing something bad or very questionable. They cheat each other whether it's over hay, the cost of a horse, shoe-ing, or God knows what. I don't know if it's the money or what, but there are so many shady people when it comes to horses. It's amazing.
    I get the horses from those types of people down here

    I think a lot of people live in constant low-to-high level fear of scarcity (an artificially induced fear for the most part), so actions like the above seem perfectly reasonable to them (it's also very hard to have empathy when in this state of mind).

    A lot of the issues I see today seem to come back to basic psychological hangups and the lack of understanding how malleable perspective/emotional state is... how much power we individuals actually have over our own experience (AND how we impactful our actions can be on other's perspectives and emotional states).

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    welding galvanized metal is a hazardous task, given the fumes are extremely toxic, good you were outside.... be mindful of the way the wind goes as you don't want to be breathing that.
    the migs have tension rollers in the box which if it binds on you and the thread won't come out so easily you can tighten the drive wheel a bit more.

    interesting life you have ....

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    Quote Originally posted by ZShawn View Post
    the migs have tension rollers in the box which if it binds on you and the thread won't come out so easily you can tighten the drive wheel a bit more.
    Yeah, I haven't messed with that yet, that's probably all I needed to do; though just adjusting the cable worked too. I might include a fan in my set up when I do the fence (though mostly because it's HOT.. haha) that should ensure I don't breath in the fumes, though it didn't seem like I was while building that gate (it's fairly breezy here most the time).

    I plan on building around 1000 feet of fence out of similar metal so I wanted to get as much practice on this stuff as I can before I start that.. it will all be out doors, I don't think garages exist down here... haha (well, not common anyway).

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    was looking around and found this.... I learned something as well, since i had been told always, that galvanized is very harmful....which it will cause adverse reactions, but not fatally so, which is really good to know as i have a pile of galv-tubing i haven't touched for welding which i feel a lot more comfortable with using....when i find the time to get into it but that is a whole other story LOL
    some good advice as well as to specific rods to use for stick welds and other little gems
    good luck with the fence build
    http://www.sperkoengineering.com/htm...Galvanized.pdf

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