Adopt or Donate a Therapy Horse

Adopt a Horse 

Does one of the Animals 4 Healing horses mean a lot to you? Show your love and support and “adopt” a therapy horse. For $3000 a year, $1000 for six months, or $500 for three months. You would be a proud foster parent of an Animals 4 Healing horse. With your sponsorship of adoption, you would be allowed and encouraged to visit your horse as often as you want. Your sponsorship will cover the cost of feed, shoeing, and vet care for the year. This will help Animals 4 Healing focus on our mission of healing.  

Donate a Horse 

Many of the horses utilized with equine therapy programs have been donated or leased to us from our community. Working with equine assisted therapy is a challenging job for our equine herd. We are always looking to expand our equine herd to make sure our horses do not burn out. A great therapy horse responds voice and leg signals and does well with walk, trot, and canter, with rhythmic and balanced gaits. The quality of the horse’s gait helps provide the best benefit to our riding participants. 

We also do ground work with our horses and participants, because of this we look for horses that are quiet and well-mannered on the ground. The horse should work easily in hand, walk around or over obstacles and tolerate a couple people walking and/or trotting alongside of the horse. 

Before referring a horse to Animals 4 Healing, please consider the following.

Characteristics of a sound equine therapy horse: 

Patient, gentle, tolerant of all aged clients 

Easy to handle on ground and in saddle 

Can handle random noises and not spook easy 

Sound at walk, trot, and canter 

Mares or geldings only 

Healthy and up to date on Coggins test 

Under 22 years of age 

Pass a trial period with Animals 4 Healing (up to 90 days) 

Note: Any medical conditions that require too much maintenance or are a liability to our clients will not be able to be accepted into Animals for Healing. 

We cannot accept horses with chronic conditions such as: 

Navicular Syndrome 

Sever Arthritis 

Ringbone 

Cushings 

**If you donate your horse to our program all rights to the horse are forfeit and a tax donation receipt will be issued. In the eventuality that the horse can no longer work in the program they will be moved to a retirement home if feasible.  

Steps for donating a horse:

Step # 1 

Animals 4 Healing staff will speak with you to learn more about your horse, your interest in our programs, and how your horse might fit into them.  

Step #2 

We will provide you with a brief questionnaire for you to complete that detail your horse’s experiences and qualities. 

Step #3 

If your horse seems like it would be a benefit to our equine assisted program, a staff member will visit the horse in person and make a video of the visit to share with all our staff. If your horse is a good fit for our program needs and we have the space, we will welcome the horse to Animals 4 Healing for a trial evaluation period. We will evaluate how the horse rides, its temperament, soundness and ability to fit our needs at our facility for up to 90 days.

Please contact Janelle@Animals4Healing.org to donate or adopt a horse. Thank you!