Silent Wave Horse Rescue

25/07/2025

14/07/2025

“Imagine Lives That Are Not Your Own”—Wendell Berry
Do you know that Silent Wave Horse Rescue is run solely by volunteers? Nobody on our board of directors, including our director, or those that run the day to day operations, who rescue, who show up to help those in need whether equine or human or both, does so for any personal gain. Often Expenses come out of our own pockets and time is crunched but we show up to help. We go out of our way. Every donation that SWHR receives goes towards the rescue, feed and care, Veterinary and farrier care, and training of our rescues and sanctuary residents, and to our community outreach services. Nobody pockets a penny. Every hour, minute, second spent on keeping the wheels turning of this amazing rescue is all volunteer. We serve those in need.
If you cannot imagine going out of your way to help others in need without benefitting from it, which means you cant imagine others doing just that, then try to expand your limits of thinking and…imagine it ❤️. The rewards we gain cannot be counted on paper. Our bank accounts don’t grow, our trophy shelves remain empty, but we know we’re doing everything we can to make the world a slightly better place for those with whom we share this beautiful planet. There is joy in practicing kindness and compassion. There is reward in giving a voice to the voiceless. There is satisfaction in taking action. There is gratitude and grace in the practise of gratitude, and gratitude just keeps growing.
If you’ve received benefits from Silent Wave Horse Rescue there are ways to acknowledge that. You can support us through donations if you’re able—which helps us help someone else, helps us show up (our vehicles and trailers are superbly maintained so that we and you can count on us to show up—there is great expense in that and most of that expense is absorbed personally because SWHR would not be able to afford the vehicles we use), no donation is too small. It costs a lot to keep SWHR’s wheels turning, literally and figuratively, and we’re deeply grateful to each of our donors. You can physically help us out, relieve our workload a little. Volunteer for a few hours or a day, or regularly. (PSA: Definitely help to clean the equipment or trailers you borrowed from SWHR, return these in the shape you borrowed them, so that we don’t have to and so the trailer is ready for the next evacuation or need). We’re all volunteer. We have real jobs too. We’re very busy. We’re humans. We gain nothing from what we do for SWHR beyond the sense that hopefully we’re helping those in need. We pride ourselves on showing up when needed, to the best of our abilities (and we have a pretty high success rate of rescuing, i think around 100%), we aren’t compensated for it by anyone or any entity, including from law enforcement when they summon us. We receive no government support, grants, or subsidies (which is a good thing since those are being cut to nonprofits). We show up because that’s what we’re committed to do, just like any other volunteer service.
You too can imagine making the world a little better for someone else for no monetary or personal gain. You’ll like it, we promise. Try it. Imagine it 💖

paypal.me/silentwavehrgmailcom

14/07/2025

🤣🤣

💸

10/07/2025

Update: Long Point Fire is contained and no longer threatening property 🙏🏼🙏🏼
Sigh…. It’s officially started out here. Fire 🔥 season. Our first fire of the year, about 10 miles away, upwind, likely started by lightning last night and fanned by a very dry hot strong westerly wind this afternoon. That old familiar hint of smoke in the air had our hackles up.
We were summoned by Grant County Sheriff Todd McKinley to evacuate 5 mules whose home was just downwind and over the crest from the fast growing fire, which spread from 10 to 200 acres within a couple hours. Lots of aerial assault on it, winds finally calmed down after sunset. Mules are safely settled in to SWHR and let’s hope and pray that the fire has been squashed. It’s in rough steep country, hard to access on the ground. Thanks to the helicopter and fixed wing aircraft brigade who relentlessly attacked it. Not taking chances this year. 🚁 ✈️
Huge thanks to Ansleigh Douglas, Brandy Graves Davis and Mike Davis, Brad Julie Mansfield Smith, Dave and Jin Bo Ciochetti and Grant County Sheriff Todd McKinley for helping me to rally and hook up SWHR’s trailers, prep holding pens, and/or catch, hold, and load/unload, corral, and feed 5 adorable aircraft-wound-up rowdy mules 🤠.
Prayers for no more fires 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

paypal.me/silentwavehrgmailcom

09/07/2025

Beautiful Bella 💖

06/07/2025

This.

It’s incredibly alarming to see the number of horse people who want to insist that behavioural problems are not caused by pain, even in the case of horses they’ve never handled.

This attitude leads to horses being worked through pain or, worse, punished for their reaction to pain because people refuse to consider the idea that there could be a physical problem.

I’m seeing this in droves on the short I posted or my work with Magic, a very reactive OTTB gelding.

Despite the fact that the short shows a massive change in behaviour, many people are still insisting things like the following:

“He’s not in pain, he’s just a brat.”

“He needs an attitude adjustment”

“That is a disrespectful horse”

“That horse belongs in a dog food can.”

“Sore feet don’t cause rearing.”

People are making these assessments from a 75 second video despite the fact that the video states pain was a factor.

All of this on a video that shows substantial behavioural change, too.

Imagine how these people look at horses in their day-to-day life that they haven’t seen the “after” of.

It does horses such a disservice to view all unwanted behaviour through the lens of the horse being disrespectful.

It’s also incredibly dismissive to assume that pain isn’t a factor when people involved with the horse have done diagnostic processes to determine underlying pain and work to resolve it.

It becomes pretty clear how much pain influences behaviour when you start to make changes that result in substantial behavioural change, as what happened when we started to address his hoof pain.

If anything, a lot MORE horses are reacting to underlying pain that is then blamed as a training issue — not less.

Horses are very stoic animals and will hide discomfort where they can because the lame horse is the one that gets eaten by predators.

Chronic pain can create reactivity and hyper vigilance that can manifest in a number of different ways.

It saddens me to see how many people in a community that claims to love horses are willing to give the horse the benefit of the doubt and look deeper.

The people in the comments section of that short responding with anger and animosity towards the horse or a dismissiveness to an informed perspective on what led to his behaviour speak for a greater issue within the horse world.

People think that training with a behavioural science informed lens is “reading too far into horse behaviour” because so many of us have been trained to view horse behaviour through a very limited and shallow lens.

Horses deserve better.

Times are changing.

This information is becoming more and more accessible.

This makes it far less justifiable for people to continue burying their heads in the sand and going out of their way to directly or indirectly blame the horse.

The studies that have been conducted on horse pain, if anything, show that lameness and underlying pain are a rampant issue in the horse world. Even with horses who are perceived as sound.

This begs the question:

“Why are people so averse to considering that pain and discomfort can create the behavioural problems they face?”

Lastly, what does giving the horse the benefit of the doubt take away from you?

06/07/2025

Bonnie (left) and Bella (right), 3 months after rescue. These two beautiful and deserving Arab girls are living a beautiful life in foster, on acreage, with friends and excellent care. They just had their feet done, thank you Jeff Larson!—hooves are looking so much better. They both continue to respond incredibly well to their rehabilitation protocol—Bella, maybe a bit too well lol—she says, “It’s all in the camera angle!”. We say, “Time to cut back, Miss Bella!” 😍😍 (yes, we’re watching her closely, so far no signs of, nor could there have been a way that we’re aware of— that she’s pg….🤞🏽🤞🏽).
Thank you to everyone who has supported their rescue journey, and to their amazing foster home, the Amstat Family Farm 🙏🏼💖
Bottom photo, just in case you forgot Bonnie’s condition at intake a mere 3 months ago 😢

paypal.me/silentwavehrgmailcom

04/07/2025

Owner Found!
Grant County, Oregon, Mt. Vernon area. Does anyone recognize these two horses? They wandered onto someone’s property on Nans Rock Rd.
Chestnut is a gelding, Bay is a mare. Please let us or Grant County Sheriff’s Office know if they’re yours or if you know them. Very sweet, appear loved and cared for.