High River horsewoman busy with animal rehab

A local woman who gained attention when she rode her horse through High River continues to save horses.

Shelby says she, her partner, and a couple of friends run Two Hearts Equine Rehab and they've kept a lot of horses from slaughter.

"We do it solely out of my pocket, my partner's pocket and a couple other friends of ours that help out, so we don't take donations. It's called Two Hearts Equine Rehab, we've got an Instagram that people can go to to take a look at if they want and it has all the stories on the different horses that we bring in," she says.

"We moved here in 2019 and started bringing our first sets of rescues in June and we've been doing it ever since so we've probably put about a hundred horses through that were either meat horses or rescues, surrenders, injuries, all that fun stuff and then we do have our own personal horses that we do utilize for a lot of training and riding as well.":

She says the last six horses she picked up in Rimby where a lot of the animals are taken and sold to meat buyers, but they also get them from Fort Macleod where she was able to buy them right out of the pen or right off the trucks.

Shelby says she won't bid against other individuals who are there to purchase a horse, only against the shippers who plan to send them to slaughter.

They also got a lot of horses surrendered during COVID because people couldn't afford to take care of them anymore.

"This year I'm finding there's a lot more horses going up, either for sale or for free or going to be auctioned because of the hay prices, hay is expensive, and a lot of people just can't afford it," she says.

Shelby says the horse she took to the Tim Horton's garnered interest from a number of media outlets and one woman in particular saw it and thought it was hilarious, so she came out and rode the horse and ended up taking it home.

Unfortunately, that attention has also garnered some much more negative backlash on social media which she passes on to RCMP and says so far nothing's happened.

For those who may have wondered, Shelby explains that when she does ride into town it's usually only for about an hour and if her horse 'does its business' she returns quickly with a shovel to pick it up and is trying out a new product that acts like a diaper for horses.