Midnight's Promise Equine Rescue

06/03/2026

🌎🐴 Horse welfare standards vary around the world, but they all share a common goal: supporting the physical health, mental well-being, and natural behaviors of horses.

Some countries have regulations around turnout time, social interaction, transportation, feeding practices, air quality, stable lighting, and even whether whiskers can be trimmed. These guidelines are designed to help improve equine welfare and encourage evidence-based management practices across the industry.

To help make this information more accessible, we created the Global Horse Welfare Database, a free resource that compiles equine welfare laws, regulations, and recommendations from countries around the world.

The database allows horse owners, caretakers, veterinarians, coaches, and industry professionals to explore how different regions approach a number of topics.

Welfare science continues to evolve, and understanding global standards can help spark important conversations about best practices in horse care and management.

06/01/2026

Our latest arrival, Marvelous, who returned last week after being adopted 10 years ago, joined his new herd with Akira, Stardust, and Miakoda this morning. We have been letting Marv get acquainted with his new friends over their stall walls this past week. This morning he was allowed to explore his new pasture and gradually added the other horses one by one starting with the most dominant. For now it seems Marv has chosen the old gray gelding, Akira, to be his companion.

05/31/2026

Farm dogs playing. My dog Winston and Jane H Wilkinson dog Willie

05/25/2026

Welcome back to Marvelous who was adopted into a home 10 years ago. We maintain a spot for all our adopted horses to return to no matter the reason or their stage in life.

Marv is a 24- year-old Tennessee Walking Horse that we rescued in 2016 from Carolina Feedlots, a controversial equine "kill lot" that shipped horses to Mexico for slaughter. When he was about 13, Marv lost his peripheral vision. According to his vet, this type of injury is caused by a blow to the poll (or the space between a horse's ears). Did he rear and hit his head in a trailer? Did someone hit him in the head with a board or bat? We have no way of knowing.

It takes a rare individual to take a horse like Marv and we are extremely grateful to Cathy who adopted him and gave him a loving home for the past 10 years. It wasn't always easy. Cathy didn't have her own farm so she boarded at stables or individuals. The care wasn't always very good or the caregiver no longer wanted to deal with the special handling Marv requires. This past winter her stable kept running out of hay causing Marv to lose lots of weight. She moved him to another place and helped him regain most of his weight. However Cathy felt she could no longer give Marv the time and care he needed so she made the difficult decision to return him to Midnight's Promise.

I'd like to thank Jane H Wilkinson snd Kristy Auten for transporting him to the rescue today. We will give Marv some time to decompress and settle in then we will let him join the small herd with Akira, Miakoda, and Stardust who are very sweet horses.

05/23/2026

Today we said farewell to our dear mare, Walburga. and allowed her to cross the Rainbow Bridge. She passed gently and in her last moments, she was surrounded by the people who cared for her on a daily basis.
Many of her old friends visited her this week to say their goodbyes and showed their love with massages, treats, scratchies, and hugs.
Walburga will be dearly missed. We pulled her from the slaughter pipeline in 2018 after she had been raced, auctioned off, Amish worked and sold to a feed lot when she could no longer work at the young age of 15 years old. We had her treated for a neurological condition and gave her 8 good years but she started declining a year ago. A veterinary examination confirmed that it was time to make a difficult decision and Wally was laid to rest.

I will always remember Walburga for her beautiful intense gaze, her hatred of fly masks, her love of cold showers, her habit of slapping us humans in the face with her wet tail afterwards, and her ability to roll from left to right and back again. Walburga avoided most human contact but once she learned we humans are great horse fly swatters, she would come charging across the pasture and swing her rump in front of us so we could kill the offensive pest. Over the years. I've learned not to ask certain volunteers why they had so many bandaids on or why they were missing a patch of hair from their head.

Wally, you were a fierce and beautiful soul. You were loved and will always be remembered. Vaya con dios. Walburga.

05/19/2026

We help our rescues beat the heat by putting hay in shady wooded nooks.

05/02/2026

04/24/2026

It's National Volunteer Appreciation week and we'd like to recognize our 'Hall of Famers' or volunteers, both past and present, that have gone beyond the normal call of duty with their dedication to our mission to rescue horses.

04/23/2026

Here's Boone, an 11-year-old off the track Thoroughbred rescued from a local individual in 2023. Boone was weak from starvation and covered in painful rainrot. His weakened state lowered his immune system and he became ill after arrival. The attending vet recommended euthanization. We were not ready to give up on him so we requested that she administer stronger pain killers and stronger antibiotics. It was the right call. He began improving within 24 hours and bloodwork confirmed the additional antibiotic was exactly what he needed. It has been a joy to watch Boone return to being a healthy, energetic, young horse. We gave him a full year to recover his strength before putting him back under saddle and hired a professional trainer to get him started again before our volunteers took over. Boone was adopted by a nice young couple last month and is doing well.

Boone's is just one of the stories of the horses we have rescued in our 10 years as a horse rescue. We depend on fundraisers and donations in order to fullfill our mission to rescue, rehabilitate, and rehome horses that have been abandoned, abused, starved neglected or that are in danger of going into the slaughter pipeline.

To care for our current herd of 9 rescues we are raffling a $300 Visa card. Funds will go toward general expenses such as feed, hay, hoof care, and medical needs. Tickets are $10 each. Drawing is Saturday June 6th at 2pm of FaceBook Live. To get your tickets click on

https://www.midnightspromise.org/product-page/3-raffle-tickets

We accept PayPal or checks. Checks can be sent to
Midnight's Promise
405 Ross St China Grove NC 28023.

We will send you a photo of your tickets by email, Facebook or text and will notify you if you win. Thank you all for your support!