 Hey guys, this is Melissa with Oxmer Toyota and today we are out here with Shara, who's the equine director of their all-new Kentucky Humane Society Rescue Barn. Shara, so can you tell us a little bit about this program that you have here? Sure. The equine care program, which is our program that started about four years ago, works specifically with horses. Everyone knows the Kentucky Humane Society for their dog and cat program, but we also have a horse program or the equine program as well. Yeah. And we just recently purchased this property about three weeks ago, so this is brand new to us. Brand new. Yes. And we're still getting used to things and learning what works and what doesn't here for our horses. Awesome. Well, yeah, so we have a long-standing partnership, you know, Kentucky Humane Society and Oxmer Toyota. So, you know, thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to kind of, you know, handle the tundra and the truck for you guys. What do you guys use this truck for? Well, first of all, I'd like to thank you all for their wonderful partnership. Oxmer Toyota has been great to us. And then also to the ASPCA, they have partnered with us in order for us to have a retention program for equines in Kentucky. Sure. And this truck is going to be used for that retention program to help deliver services and supplies as needed when owners request the assistance. Hi, Dale. This is one of our wonderful horses here at the equine, Kentucky equine barn, and his name is Dale. He did not come in with a name, but we named him Dale, and he came in with another gilding. He was abandoned on a farm in Jefferson County. And Louisville Metro actually seized him, and then they asked us to hold him because they don't have a facility for horses. And once the 15-day stray hold was up, Dale was transferred into our care, and he actually has recently been adopted and he will be going to Michigan. He will be a companion to another horse in his new home. Dale, that the horses are rated on for their body fat, body score. Our vet gave him a one because literally her comment was I have to give him a number. So she gave him a one. He was skin and bones, and now he, Carmen's rubbing on the gate. He's as healthy as can be now, and it was just a refeeding program that his previous owner was not educated on, and animal control stepped in because he was so emaciated, and now he's just as happy as can be, and he's got his best friend, and so they have to be adopted together. We're not going to separate. We're not going to take Carmen from Talbert. Yeah, they're bonded. Yep, they are bonded. We laugh and say, Carmen could do without Talbert, but Talbert can't do without Carmen, and he's a whopping 28 years old. So he deserves to just hang out, yes, and have a life of retirement and not be stressed any longer. And in order for that to happen, they have to stay together. Yeah. All right, Cheris, so we've got a few other horses here. Let's go take a look at them. Hi, Oakley. Oh, you'll get to see what some of ours look like when they come into care. Yeah. Oakley was a stray, and she was extremely emaciated. She's been in our care for a couple of months, and she's gained a significant amount of weight, and you can still see how skinny she is. I can say she's still got skin and bones. When the vet checked her out, she's only about a year and a half old, and the vet has never had to do a dental on a horse that young, but he did have to her because she had ground some of her teeth down trying to find anything that she possibly could eat. Right. So she's well on her way to recovery. She clearly has a long ways to go, but she's working at a healthy rate on gain and weight. You know, you don't want to put too much on them too quickly because that can shock their body. So she's doing fantastic, and they're all not real happy right now because it's time for them to come in and get out of this sun and the nasty flies. See, these flies are bad. Yeah, they are bad. This is Sansa, and she originally came from Texas, and then she most recently came to us from a rescue partner in Missouri. We have a transport program, so we're able to transport different horses to and from other rescues in other states. And the idea behind that is, for example, we here in Kentucky are inundated with gated horses and thoroughbreds. And for example, in Missouri, they're not. So if we can transfer some of our really good gated horses and thoroughbreds to Missouri, in all likelihood, they're going to have a better chance of getting adopted into their forever home a lot sooner than if they stay here. So we actually don't have many stock or quarter horse type. And so Sansa was brought back here for us to be able to get her adopted. And we transferred out there some of our horses that are more prevalent in this area. We have a volunteer program, and all of our volunteers go through the email volunteer at kyhumane.org. And we have a volunteer manager, whether you want to volunteer for the dog cat or equine program, it all starts with Savannah and she's the manager. And then she will work you through that process. So there's paperwork to fill out. There's orientation that you will have to complete as well. And we have right now, we have on average about eight volunteers here a week, which is a huge help to us, especially since we're in our orphan full season. Yeah. And we have to provide round the clock care to those foals. If we couldn't if we didn't have our volunteers, we wouldn't be able to provide that care as easily as we are. Sure. Yeah. That's wonderful. We'll take you. Great. She brought the carrots in a minute. That's right. Yeah, he's prepared. So tell us a little bit about these stalls. How many can you handle? Sure. We can handle 26 horses here. We had to initially do some renovation work. This was a saddle bread farm. For example, they have tailboards and a lot of their stalls. We take those out because our horses aren't familiar with tailboards. We don't want to bulk in their heads and the foals. We don't want them to get caught under them. Yeah. So we've got this half renovated. We still need to work on the second half. And it's just it's all a process. Like I said, we've only been here about three weeks. So everything is a is a process and we're getting there. These are our most these two are our most recent arrivals. And this is Izzy and Felix. Hi guys. Oh my goodness. You guys are baby babies. Yeah, they're baby babies. Typically we get our orphans about two to three days old. We will get some older than that but we can expect for them to come in between two and three days of age. These two are good. There's a lot of initial care that goes involved with that. Some of them struggle with eating out of the bucket because they're used to their mother. And so that's a process that we have to go through with each one of them to get them comfortable eating out of the bucket and making sure that they are taking in what they need to nutrition wise and in order to be able to sustain. This truck is so important to us because we needed a truck with a lot of horsepower that could travel a lot of miles in order to bring horses back from areas where owners needed us to surrender their horse. And we focus mainly on Easter Kentucky for this project. We felt that that's where the greatest need would be and this truck is going to allow us to be able to bring those horses back into care if need be. If you are an owner in Kentucky and request services, please reach out to us through our horse helpline. Well again, thank you so much. We really hope to continue this partnership with you guys. Thank you guys for all of the support and we'll see you at the Kentucky Humane Study.