Wednesday, February 22, 2012

heres the form to use to apply for spay/neuter/gelding funding assistance

link to pdf file for Spayngeld info including funding application form

You may apply for funding assistance for spay/neuter/gelding for dogs, cats, and horses. We'd like to announce 3 recipients at the end of the month this Feb. there's a form to use in this pdf file. any questions just email us at doublehphorses@alliancecom.net

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

We can learn a lot about ourselves, from horses.

If we aren't happy with the response we get from people,
perhaps it's just because of the way we present our ideas.


Please feel free to print, share, post, hang on bulletin boards, distribute. Not much time though.
It's happening this weekend!
Hope you can join us.


Saturday, February 11, 2012

Intro to Equine Assisted Learning & EAGALA Feb 18-19 at our horse shelter near Sioux Falls. Public invited. No admission. RSVP needed though. thanks.

I'll try to pretty this post up a little later, but wanted to get this announced! Next weekend we are having a very fun & free event here. We hope you can join us. Any questions, please just call. And if you plan to attend, please RSVP so we can know how many to plan for. Thanks.


The weather guys say it’s going to be 40 to 43 degrees next Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 18-19.

And you are invited to New Hope Horse Shelter on one or both of those days for a very special experience, an introduction to Equine Assisted Learning by Wendy Olson. Wendy is EAGALA (Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association) Certified as both a Mental Health Professional and an Equine Specialist. She provides Equine Assisted Learning (EAL) and Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) through her program, The Way of the Horse, near Spearfish, South Dakota.

Some of you may be familiar with Wendy’s name. That’s because she is a DoubleHP adopter and foster home. She currently cares for Rocky and Roman, two horses rescued by DoubleHP. You may have seen the video/slideshow of the little girl, Alyssa, building a snowfort this winter, with the help of Roman. Alyssa is Wendy’s granddaughter and, if we are lucky, Alyssa will be coming here with Wendy Feb. 18-19 to help with Wendy’s EAL presentation!

There is no cost to attend our Intro to EAL event. It will be very informal. You may simply observe and ask questions, or you may be able to participate in role-playing and mock EAL demonstrations with Wendy and some of the horses who live here at New Hope Horse Shelter.

You may attend one or both sessions. You do not need to attend the first to understand the second. While the actual role-playing, session demos will be different each day, Wendy’s basic program information will be available both days.

Session times:

Saturday, Feb. 18, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 19, 1 to 3:30 p.m.

If these exact times do not work for you, please let us know; we might be able to add more time to the days.

The location is at New Hope Horse Shelter, 25337 470 Ave, Crooks, SD  57020 (3 miles north of Crooks), west side of the road (blacktop), white barns, gray house with white yard fence.

The event will be in the big riding barn. It is NOT a heated facility, so wear lots of layers so you can stay comfortable depending on what the temperatures are (forecast is for 40-43 degrees, so this should be pretty doable!)

Also, please bring a chair. When we say this is informal, we really mean informal. Wendy is going to be in our area next weekend, and we are organizing this rather quickly, to take advantage of those dates. We want to bring a certified EAGALA program to our horse shelter on a regular basis, hopefully within the next year;  and Wendy has very generously offered to provide this introduction for us.

We highly recommend you visit the EAGALA website to learn more about it: www.eagala.org

EAGALA is NOT a riding program, so we will not be interfering with the wonderful therapeutic riding programs that are already operating in the Sioux Falls area. EAGALA is different.

All EAGALA sessions are on the ground; there are no mounted sessions. There is a team: the horse, the mental health professional, and the equine specialist. And there is a client or clients. The sessions can of course be for actual counseling, therapy type situations. Or they may be geared more for corporate/business training such as teamwork exercises.

I don’t want to say too much because I don’t know too much yet. That’s why Wendy is coming here next weekend! To answer our questions and present demonstrations with the assistance of some of our horses here.

While our event here Feb. 18-19 is informal and without a fee, we still DO need to know how many will be attending. So please email me doublehphorses@alliancecom.net or call (605) 359-0961. Let me know which session or sessions you will be attending and how many will be in your group. And feel free to share any other questions or suggestions you may have.

This will be fun! Hope you can join us.

Darci Hortness, DoubleHP President, Manager of New Hope Horse Shelter

Friday, February 10, 2012

Legislator's testimony about us is false

A message from our DoubleHP Founder (Darci Hortness): Most of the time, this site is a pleasant place to celebrate the happy lives of the horses we have saved, to provide resources and education to new and hopeful horse owners, and to share little tidbits about some of the fantastic humans who in some little way or big way are involved with some of our programs and experiences here. But every once in a while there is sadness to report or just something very wrong that needs to be addressed.

Recently, Rep. Frank Kloucek testified during our South Dakota State Legislative Session that he has asked me to bring legislation forward on spaying for horses (yes, he said spaying instead of gelding) and also legislation on not overbreeding horses, and also said he has asked me to bring legislation forward for funding for horse shelters, and that he has tried to work with me on these issues as well as on education programs. And what he testified is this: "She consistently refuses to do so."

Now, for those of you who know me and have been involved with DoubleHP for the last ten years or even recently, you probably know how untrue Kloucek's testimony is. I actually wish I wasn't so busy here; I would look into the procedure for filing a formal complaint against a State Legislator who gives false testimony.

Just wanted to clear that up. Unfortunately, the recording to that hearing is available on the internet, for the whole wide world to hear. And it would be a shame if some of the people who make financial donations to our 501c3 organization or help us in any other way were to discontinue that help, because of a State Legislator's false testimony.