Saturday, April 25, 2020

Staff Feature: Meet our Intern Sarah Newell

Sarah Newell with her horses Diesel, Uno, and Doc

As you may or may not have heard by now, we have an intern! Hailing from Sioux Falls, 17-year-old Sarah graduated early from Roosevelt High School and started the Livestock Management & Production program at Lake Area Tech in Watertown in the Fall of 2019. This February, she reached out to us about interning at New Hope Horse Shelter.

Prior to joining us, Sarah started volunteering at HorsePower (formerly Handi-Riders) at 9-years-old. In fact, her own three geldings – Diesel, Doc, and Uno – are also resident volunteers in HorsePower’s therapeutic riding program and her mother Shelly has been their head instructor for the last two years. Sarah’s family also includes an 11-year-old brother Caleb who lives with their dad Scott, a 27-year-old sister Alyshia who is in the nursing program at STI, a young nephew Cole (Alyshia’s son), several cats and an Australian Shepherd named Sky. Since becoming horse crazy, she has tried what seems like a little bit of everything – barrel racing, roping, team penning, dressage, and (most recently) jumping.

By now, Sarah’s been with us for about seven weeks, so we decided to sit down with her and chat about her program and what she has learned so far.

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Why did you choose Lake Area Tech?

I didn’t want to go to a four-year university, and I pretty much knew since my third semester of the last year of high school that I wanted to go into Lake Area Tech’s Large Animal Tech program, which has been combined with a bunch of other ag and livestock programs to become the Livestock Management & Production program. Right now, it’s pretty much background information. I’m learning about medicines, wound care, hay, bugs… a little bit of everything.

What do you hope to do after graduation?

I want to have my own business being a farrier. After this program, I’ll take a 6-12 week farrier course, but with all this background info, I could go into just about anything with horses, cows, sheep, pigs, etc. A friend in Minnesota finished the farrier program this winter and we’ve talked about possibly going into business together down the line.

Tell us more about your internship and its requirements.

There are no strict requirements. It can be part-time or full-time, paid or unpaid – it just has to be with animals and I have to show up. I’m the only person this year who is doing a horse-specific internship.

Why New Hope Horse Shelter?

I wanted to do something related to horses. A lot of the horse-related stuff is in Minnesota, though, which would have been really expensive since the internship is technically only from March through May. Margaret (Margaret Doom of HorsePower) actually told me to contact Darci (Darci Hortness of New Hope Horse Shelter), and it just worked out. Now I can live with my mom in Sioux Falls and it’s nice to be able to see my dad on the weekends, because he works on the road during the week.

What have you learned since starting your internship?

All this stuff is new, which is nice. It’s a lot of riding and Reining and Parelli stuff. Different ways to do stuff to help with certain things. The other day, Darci taught me some reining maneuvers to help with the Sideways Game [a Parelli game]. It’s cool all the things you can do with Parelli. I was trying to bring in one of the mares the other day and she kept walking away, so I “disengaged” her [a Parelli maneuver] and had her come to me. It’s also cool to be able to work on Parelli with my horses because they’ve never really had much ground work done with them beyond the basics. It makes it challenging. Like, what can I do for them to understand it better? I’m all about the horses. Like, if I fall off, whatever. I’m like, “are you okay” [to the horse]? Which my mom hates.

Do you have a favorite horse you like to work with here?

Probably Spirit. I like Spirit.

Tell us more about your own horses.

I got my Quarter Horse Diesel four years ago from my old lesson instructor at CK. I was riding Diesel in my lessons and my instructor wanted to sell him to buy a new horse, but I said, “You’re not selling him, because I’m going to buy him!” We got Doc [Quarter Horse x Thoroughbred] about a year later as a sort of confidence builder for my mom after she had an accident. Then we got Uno, who is a one-eyed Quarter Horse, about a year ago around Christmas because he was a good horse for HorsePower and I wanted to get another horse, just because.

What is one of your favorite things about horses?

How much you can learn from them. They can teach you a lot.

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Thanks so much for reading! We hope you enjoyed learning a little more about our intern Sarah, and we’re excited that she is going to be with us until classes start again in the fall!



Tuesday, April 14, 2020

"Friends of Freddie" Fundraiser

If you follow our Facebook page, you may have already seen that New Hope Horse Shelter is raising money for our feline friend Freddie.

With the uncertainty of everything going on around us at the moment, we’ve held off on this fundraiser for a bit. As a 501c3 non-profit organization, we get little to no income as it is, and have to rely on the generosity of sponsors, donations, and participation in our Horsemanship program. Since our Horsemanship program has been put on hold indefinitely in the interest of keeping everyone safe and healthy, the financial strain is beginning to show and vet bills wait for no one. That’s why we’ve decided to go ahead with Freddie’s fundraiser.

Freddie is one of the many feral cats we have live-trapped over the years. He was de-bugged, vaccinated, and neutered, and now he lives here with the twelve other cats that come and go from our heated garage. They love to go out into the trees (their jungle) to pretend they’re still wild, then come back to the garage for food, warmth, and safety.

Freddie is only about 3 years old. He has a fracture of the head of his femur that the vet says was probably caused from jumping down from a place that was too high up. He can walk but he doesn’t put his full weight on the leg due to pain. The good news is that the vet can perform an FHO, or femoral head ostectomy, which is a surgical procedure to restore pain-free mobility to Freddie’s damaged hip.

So far, his vet bill is already over $600, and the FHO will add close to another $800, so we are hoping to raise $1,400 for Freddie. Please help us relieve Freddie’s pain so he can live out the rest of his natural life as a pampered house kitty. Any small amount is appreciated!

If you'd like to contribute to the "Friends with Freddie" fund, you can click the donate button on the right side of this page, or you can go to our post on Facebook and use the donate link there.