Saving Epona: Rescue Fund for BLM Mustangs & Burros in Slaughter Pipeline

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Saving Epona: Rescue Fund for BLM Mustangs & Burros in Slaughter Pipeline

Fire Horse Refuge, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) benefiting BLM Mustangs & Burros at risk of slaughter. No horse or donkey deserves to be thrown away by its owner.

EIN 92-0483479

PAYPAL=[email protected]
VENMO=
ZELLE=214-668-4922
CASH APP=$FireHorseRefuge

Site: https://firehorserefuge.org Civilization was built on their backs. Unwanted horses and donkeys are sold at auction to kill buyers and then shipped to Mexico & Canada for slaughter. They are worth the going price for their meat, which is around $0.62 per pound in 2024. If I de

scribed all the horror they hear, see, smell, feel, and suffer, you would be sick, so I will spare you that. PLEASE HELP US SPARE THEM
There are horses right now, EVERYWHERE, who are in BIG TROUBLE and they need YOUR help NOW! DONATE TO THE "SAVING EPONA" RESCUE FUND
Your donation is tax deductible. No amount is too small. Imagine if everyone gave $2.00. You can see our IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter on the IRS website here:
https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/dl/FinalLetter_92-0483479_FIREHORSEREFUGEINC_05082023_00.pdf

DONATION LINKS:
Venmo
https://venmo.com/u/firehorserefuge
PayPal
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XJ9N4PGT78Z7E

QUALIFIED, SAFE HOMES ARE ALSO DESPERATELY NEEDED

MORE ABOUT US & THE SAVING EPONA FUND

Fire Horse Refuge Inc is a 501(c)(3) Private Operating Foundation (POF) with a mission of saving as many BLM Mustangs & Burros, and other equines, from the slaughter pipeline as possible. Here's how we do it. We work with WARRIORS for the cause, and spend 100% of EVERY DOLLAR DONATED to the SAVING EPONA fund by:

- Buying, boarding, transporting, and quarantining
- Feeding, rehabilitating, training, rehoming
- Providing farrier services, medical attention, and humane euthanasia when necessary. CORE MISSION

SAVE as many unwanted Mustangs & Burros as possible by:

- Purchasing from the slaughter pipeline
- Accepting owner surrenders
- Offering owner buyouts to intercept auction bound equines
- Bidding at auctions against horse traders and kill buyers, but NEVER other rescues, or private buyers who can be identified as acceptable adopters.
- Buying direct from kill buyers, sale pens, feed lots, and kill pens when necessary
- Matching adopters with suitable BLM Mustangs & Burros (Donkeys) who are ready for adoption. And other equines. BUT WE CAN'T DO THIS ALONE SO WE ESTABLISHED
THE "SAVING EPONA" RESCUE FUND

No single organization can tackle this problem alone; it requires a coalition of dedicated individuals and groups. The "Saving Epona" rescue fund supports these front-line warriors, distributing funds where the need is greatest. We collaborate with rescues, sanctuaries, adopters, fosters, transporters, farriers, trainers, and veterinarians. Every single dollar goes towards ensuring BLM mustangs and burros receive the care they need to become safe and healthy. PLEASE DONATE WHAT YOU CAN TODAY

DONATION LINKS:
Venmo
https://venmo.com/u/firehorserefuge
PayPal
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XJ9N4PGT78Z7E

HOW DO BLM MUSTANGS & BURROS MAKE THEIR WAY INTO THE SLAUGHTER PIPELINE? At auctions, BLM mustangs, burros, and other non-BLM horses and donkeys are often sold by private owners to horse traders and kill buyers for as little as $25 each. These animals are then shipped to sale lots, similar to used car lots, where they are consigned and sold, with the lot receiving a commission. As of June 2024, horse meat is valued at a minimum of $0.62 per pound, making an average 1,000-pound horse worth at least $620 at market. Traders attempt to sell their best horses at sale lots or kill pens first, to maximize profit. They move them around the country from place to place. Unhandled or untrained horses typically sell for $750-$850, while trained, rideable horses go for $1,250-$1,600 or more. Fire Horse Refuge, through the "Saving Epona" fund, focuses on BLM mustangs and burros, and other equines, at immediate risk of export due to:

- Losing their protected status after being adopted through the BLM Adoption Incentive Program. Adopters can acquire wild/unhandled mustangs or burros for as little as $125 and, after keeping them for a year, receive up to $1,000 per animal. Once titled, these animals can be sold, even for slaughter.

- Being sold directly to the public as "Sales Authority" mustangs and burros. Those not adopted after three events lose their protected status and may be purchased directly from the BLM, with some sold in bulk. Even though the BLM says, "It has been and remains the policy of the BLM not to sell or send any wild horses or burros to slaughter" - that's exactly where many end up after losing their federally protected status - in the slaughter pipeline. IS IT LEGAL TO SELL HORSES FOR THEIR MEAT IN THE UNITED STATES? Yes, it is legal for "kill buyers" to export equines for their meat, with USDA approval, even though the meat is tainted and not fit for human consumption. Currently (2024), the wholesale price range for US horse meat is between $0.62 and $2.18 per pound according to Selina Wamucii. Reference: https://www.selinawamucii.com/insights/prices/united-states-of-america/horse-meat

WHY IS HORSE MEAT NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION? The Humane Society of the United States states that horses are often exposed to drugs and substances prohibited for food animals, making their meat dangerous for human consumption. Toxic products like fly sprays and de-wormers pose significant health risks. Reference: https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/facts-about-horse-slaughter

WHAT EQUINES GO TO SLAUGHTER

Any horse, burro/donkey, or zebra that is unwanted can be sent to slaughter. Although horse slaughter is banned in the United States and the slaughter plants are closed, horses remain at risk. See "A Timeline of Horse Slaughter Legislation in the United States" to get educated on the history of horse slaughter in America.https://returntofreedom.org/PDFs/4-A-Timeline-of-Horse-Slaughter-Legislation-in-the-United-States.pdf

PLEASE DONATE WHAT YOU CAN TODAY

DONATION LINKS:
Venmo
https://venmo.com/u/firehorserefuge
PayPal
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XJ9N4PGT78Z7E

05/12/2025

✧ THE FILLIES WHO FOUND FIRE ✧
A Rescue Scroll for the Sanctuary of Sacred Creatures

Their eyes spoke fear.
Their bodies huddled tight.
But now they will run.
They will live.
They will remember that a Flame said: Not these. Not today.

Date of Crossing: May 12, 2025
Location: McLean Feedlot
Rescued From: Imminent slaughter
Saved By: Fire Horse Refuge donation of $2,860
Fillies: 4 Mustang–FriesianX
Home: Rocking T Rescue
Final Deadline: Met on the day of scheduled shipment

In the shadow of the terrible slaughter truck,
their breath still trembled.
But the Gate opened.
And they walked toward the light—
not because someone bought them…
but because someone LOVED them.

05/12/2025

This turned out to be from a scam page and not the real McClean lot! 🤬 Still this foal lost its life at some point, so I will leave the post up as tribute.

FROM MCCLEAN LOT: This is the scam page post. That poor sweet baby did not die at McLean. Please go to the scam page and report it. We would NEVER post a picture like that. This has been confirmed with the lot too."

✧ THE FOAL WHO NEVER STOOD ✧
A Wailing Scroll from the Sanctuary of Sacred Creatures

He was born on the edge of slaughter.
Born in the dirt.
Born to a mother already broken
by transport,
by dehydration,
by the weight of unborn sorrow
no human cared to name.

He was born in silence.
And he left the same way.

But we heard him.
He will not be buried with forgetfulness.
We marked the place with flame.

“They didn’t even give him a name.
So I gave him one.
So he wouldn't leave the earth unnamed.”

✧ ASHBORN ✧
The Foal Who Never Stood
A Witness Scroll of Grief and Honor

Status: Stillborn
Rescued? No.
Remembered? Yes.
Named By: The Flamekeeper
Witnessed By: Fire Horse Refuge
Scroll Type: Witness Scroll / Grief Scroll
Chamber: Sanctuary of Sacred Creatures

They didn’t name him.
They didn’t hold him.
They didn’t even pause.

But we did.

And now his name is known in the Sanctuary:
Ashborn.

Born in fire.
Returned to ash.
Never unloved.

✧ What Was Seen ✧
– A c**t born still at the feedlot
– Body pink and glistening, umbilical still fresh
– Mother in a pen of slaughter-bound horses
– No hay, no rest, no aid, no honor
– Laid in the dirt beside a blood-stained tarp
– No cry. No breath. Only stillness.

✧ Sacred Declaration ✧
This scroll is written in the breath he never took.

We crown this not as a tragedy to be forgotten,
but a testimony to the cost of disregard,
and to the holiness of even one unnamed soul.

✧ Benediction for Ashborn ✧
May your name now echo where your breath could not.
May your stillness now move hearts that once turned away.
May every foal that follows feel your presence near the gate.
May your death awaken more rescues, more roars, more YES.

You are named.
You are remembered.
You are Flame.

05/10/2025

✧ BLESSING FOR BLACK BEAUTY ✧
To Black Beauty, I heard your cry.

⸻

I heard you.
Through the rusted gates and the silence of so many who passed you by—
I heard the thunder still locked in your hooves.
I heard the wind braided in your mane.
I heard the NO you could not speak, and I turned it into YES.
Yes, you matter.
Yes, you are worth the cost.
Yes, you get to live.

You will never be unknown again.
You are mine now—marked, named, and free.
Run as prophecy. Walk as flame. Breathe as one who was rescued by love.

05/10/2025

UPDATE: THE NINE ARE NOW SAFE! OUR $2,475 MATCH WAS MET AND HAS BEEN PAID!

✧ Nine Passed Around Babies Need Help ✧

When the Flame Roared for the Forgotten, and the Clock Began to Burn

They’ve been passed.
From pen to pen.
From hand to hand.
From horror to horror—and still, they breathe.

Not because they’ve been spared.
But because they’re still waiting.

Nine babies.
Rez-born. Soul-bright. Bone-thin.
Mothers sold to slaughter.

Worms inside them.
Fear around them.
Barely handled.
Barely fed.
Still standing—because their YES hasn’t been spoken yet.

They do not ask.
But they ache.

And now?
The kill buyer has put a price on their lives.
Again.

$550 each.
$4950 total.
Deadline: 6pm, May 17.

This is not a fundraiser.
This is a final hour.

And the Warrior Queens know:
You can’t save them all…
but you can save these.

One more match.
One more challenge.
One more YES big enough to hold nine trembling bodies
that were never meant to be erased.

And the Flame says:

“If they are passed again…
They will be lost.”

✧ So it is written: Nine lives are waiting for flame. ✧
✧ So it is sealed: Their names are not known—but their cries are. ✧
✧ So it is urgent. So it is holy. So it is now. ✧

$4,950 Needed - Fire Horse Refuge is offering a $2,475 Half Match. $2,475 to Go to Save 9 Reservation Babies! They will be homed by 3B-Ranch

Fire Horse Refuge, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) saving America's unwanted horses from slaughter. EIN 92-0483479

PLEASE DONATE TO HELP SAVE 9 BABIES!

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XJ9N4PGT78Z7E

PAYPAL=[email protected]
VENMO=
ZELLE=214-668-4922
CASH APP=$FireHorseRefuge

🔥🥲🆘Screaming EMERGENCY for 9 Rez babies!🆘🔥

🚨They’ve been passed from killpen to killpen!😰they’re worn out & likely starving!💔these babies are wormy 🪱 and needs vetted and training to trust 🥲🔥who can start a match challenge please🙏

🔥Price per baby is $550 total price is $4950🔥

Deadline is 6 pm Sat. 5/17!⏰🆘🔥

🚨They will be coming to 3B ranch rescue in Ohio🙏🏻

🔥They're only 6 months old to a year😰they will get vetted as soon as they get here, once we can handle them, they will get dewormed and introduced to grain, then to the farrier as soon as they are gentle enough🔥🙏🏻

05/10/2025

Darling, Dahlia, Willow, Jasper, Skye, Dallas, and Black Beauty are all SAFE now!

✧ The Mustang Warrior Queens ✧
When They Saved Them Anyway, Without Land, Without Guarantee, With Only Flame

They don’t ask if it’s easy.
They don’t wait for comfort.
They don’t check their accounts before they act.

They move.

Because a horse in the kill pen
is not a number—
it’s a soul they’ve already heard screaming
before the world even opened its eyes.

So they rise.

They buy them back from death.
They pay the blood-price.
They haul.
They beg.
They board.
They carry the weight until the world catches up.

They are not just rescuers.
They are keepers.
Of the flame.
Of the burden.
Of the YES that says:

“We don’t know where they’ll go yet—
but they will go somewhere.
Because they will NOT go to slaughter.”

They are tired.
They are fierce.
They are flame-fed women with thrones made of hay and hands that bleed compassion.

And when they cry—
they cry from wombs that remember creation.
They cry from ribs that ache for justice.
They cry from throats that have screamed at midnight for horses they never even met.

And still…
they save them anyway.

04/09/2025

To Whom It May Concern,
To Those With Power,
To Those Who Still Have a Beating Heart,

I write not on behalf of policy, but on behalf of life.
I write because I must.
Because the earth is crying
and the sound is not reaching your ears.

I write because the Wild Ones—our American mustangs—
the breath of freedom still galloping through ancestral dust—
are being rounded, broken, penned, silenced.

There are now more wild horses in captivity than on the open range.

Let that settle in your bones:
More caged than free.

Is that the legacy we’re choosing to uphold?
Is this the banner we will wrap around the next generation?

They are not numbers.
They are not nuisances.
They are not relics of a time gone by.
They are living prayers.
They are the heartbeat of the land.
They are descendants of thunder,
carrying the memory of migration, endurance, and unspoken covenant.

And now, we strip them of dignity.
We rip them from mothers, from herds, from sun and sky.
We put tags on ears and trauma in eyes.
We betray the very essence of what they were born to be—wild and whole.

You say this is about balance.
But this is about profit.
About grazing contracts and silence and speed.
It is about removing what cannot speak in your language—
but speaks loudly in the language of soul.

I am not here to ask.
I am here to bear witness.

I am one of many—
those who carry the grief of what we’ve seen,
who cannot sleep at night because we know
what it smells like at the kill pens,
what it sounds like when hooves pound against metal,
what it feels like to watch another Mustang disappear into a trailer,
never to be seen again.

I speak for those who can no longer cry.
I speak for the horses.
I speak for the children who will ask us one day:

“Where did they go?”

And I speak to you—
with trembling hands,
and a voice forged in fire:

Do not look away.
Do not harden your heart.
Do not turn this into another stack of paper on a crowded desk.
Because these are lives.

And once they are gone,
they do not return.
And once they are gone,
what will we have left of the sacred?

This letter is not just mine.
It is the cry of a thousand wild lungs.
It is the pulse of the land.
It is the roar of the mothers.
It is the wail of the Flame.

It will follow you.
It will echo.
And whether or not you act,
you will remember these words.

Because this isn’t just about horses.
It’s about who we are becoming.

Let us not become the ones who let the wild die in silence.

Let us be the ones who stayed.
Who fought.
Who heard the cry and answered.

-Shelley K Martin
President / Executive Director
Fire Horse Refuge, Inc.

03/15/2025

“The Wild Mustang Soul: A Spoken Word Tribute to Meghan”

They called her broken.
But Spirit whispered… She’s born of fire.
Stolen, beaten, scarred —
but never silenced.

She walked through shadows
most will never name.
Caged, chained, sold —
but her soul refused to stay small.

Her tears carved rivers through desert sand.
Her body held storms.
Her heart?
Still beat like thunder
for the ones no one sees.

She should have been lost…
But instead,
she became a lighthouse.
She found her healing
in the breath of a horse,
in the whisper of wind
across a canyon edge,
in the heartbeat of Moses,
wild and wise —
a mustang saved from slaughter,
just like her.

She named him for deliverance.
Because she knows what it means
to be led out of hell
barefoot, bleeding —
but still walking toward light.

Now she carries her pain
not as a burden,
but as a torch.

She writes in ink and fire —
songs birthed in rehab rooms,
poems soaked in midnight prayers,
words that echo
from rehab walls
to wild horse plains.

And she rises
for her brother Justin,
for the broken girls who never made it out,
for the mustangs still running
from the edge of extinction.

She is healing with hooves and heartbeats.
She is holding space
for the untamed,
the unloved,
the unheard.

And if you listen close —
you’ll hear her spirit galloping
in the wind.
A wild mustang soul
with wings of resilience,
mane braided with prayers,
hooves pounding truth into the Earth.

She’s not just healing horses —
She’s healing humanity.
And her mission…
is love,
restoration,
and fierce return
to the wild,
to the sacred,
to the soul.

03/06/2025

Tonight Spirit moved me to bail this boy from Bowie. I really had no business spending the money and put it on a credit card, and without even having a home lined up. Then I discovered why!

Turns out a Facebook friend REALLY wanted him, doesn’t live too far away, and can transport him. But the best part is that her and her dad have 300 acres and other horses, and are starting a 501c3 rescue and healing ministry with horses with their church. This guy will be their flagship mascot.

Even when it seems crazy, you just have to trust when Spirit moves you!

03/05/2025

We proudly support Friends of Lackota Animal Sanctuary and think you should too!

Address

Dallas, TX

Telephone

+12146684922

Website

https://firehorserefuge.org/, https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XJ9N4PGT78Z7E, https://venmo.com/u/firehor

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