FB friend is forwarding posts by Sabrina Connaughton and Auction Horses in the Washington/Oregon area. Is this a legitimate group? Their website is not asking for donations, but there have been so many horror stories about feedlot rescues in this region that I am curious.
Guess no one has heard of her?
It is legitimate. Volunteers go out and take photos of the horses that are in kill pens at local auctions, so usually the ones that didnât sell or in some cases, sold to a kill buyer. They donât do donations, and they donât own the horses, the auction yard the horse is at owns the horse. You pay the auction house directly. Sometimes auction horse volunteers can help with transportation and temporary housing of the horses. They also have a facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuctionHorsesNW
I have used their site to rescue horses before. I suggest keeping a close eye on the site, every once in a while a great horse pops up. However, I have never met or talked to Sabrina.
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Yes, it is legit. These ladies work tirelessly to find homes for the horses that donât sell at auction and are in the kill pens with deadlines on their heads to ship to slaughter. It is unfortunate that more people donât ârescueâ them during the sale, where they could buy them much cheaper than afterwards, when they are priced generally around $400 give or take.
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Totally legit. I have two ponies that were networked through Auction Horses when they were working with a lot in Texas/Louisiana. Sabrina is good people. 
OK, good to know!
Very legitimate. https://www.facebook.com/AuctionHorsesNW/
She is going to be attending the Horsesâ Honor Senior Horse Sanctuary OPEN HOUSE on April 23, 2016 for the ASPCA âHelp A Horse Dayâ Open House and TACK SALE.
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Sabrina Connaughton of Auction Horse Rescues.
Very legitimate. https://www.facebook.com/AuctionHorsesNW/
She is going to be attending the Horsesâ Honor Senior Horse Sanctuary OPEN HOUSE on April 23, 2016 for the ASPCA âHelp A Horse Dayâ Open House and TACK SALE.
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Responding to this older post
[QUOTE=Scribbler;8462296]
FB friend is forwarding posts by Sabrina Connaughton and Auction Horses in the Washington/Oregon area. Is this a legitimate group? Their website is not asking for donations, but there have been so many horror stories about feedlot rescues in this region that I am curious.
http://auctionhorses.org/[/QUOTE]
This is a legitimate group. I personally have purchased ten horses here. Eight of these horses turned out be very nice trail/riding school and small horse show type mounts. One I knew was lame and I just took him home for a nice retirement because he was sweet. The last one was a dud but 9 out of 10 is not bad.
You can get the horse vetted on site by a local vet and get a better idea of what you are getting.
Some of these horses are right off the range and will need to learn how to be domestic horse with a mustang trainer.
In a nutshell youâre removing a horse from a terrible fate.
The horse might be sick. You should put the horse in quarentine and really be strict about not spreading germs from your hands, clothes, boots, buckets etc to other horses. If they arenât sick when the arrive they will be exposed to terrible things.
You might get a really useful mount. You might be euthanizing.
You can find local people who sometimes will have the horse shipped to them and quarantine for you. When the horse is healthy or becomes healthy you bring it home.
You wonât be solving the problem but what you do for the horse you save is HUGE.
The nine horses that worked out went from being unable to touch them to mild mannered mounts in just over a year. That said I have a very solid classic background from some of the best people in the horse world and I sought out help. At one point I was the only person that some of the horses would trust. This wasnât good enough. I sent them off to a trainer I trusted so they would meet new people in a controlled setting. They gained a lot of confidence in this manner.
Thank you to all of you that remove horses from this system. I know there are some iffy issues about the whole thing. The bottom line for me is that the horse you remove from this fate did not deserve where he or she was going. For me that is enough of a reason to support Auction Horses.
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It is generally âlegitimateâ, they donât allow fundraising/crowd funding/etc. although like partita said, you can buy the very same horses (for a fraction of the price) if you actually GO to the auctions and bid instead of waiting until they show up on the Auction Horses page. An added bonus is that your money will actually go to the person selling the horse instead of into the pocket of the meat shipper.
For some reason, if you buy a horse at auction, you are just buying a horse that no one else seems to want.
But if you buy a horse from a rescue, you are buying a trademarked Rescue Horse with a history. Also, OK, the legitimate rescues do some vetting and rehab, so people feel the horse is a bit more guaranteed, and they donât need to deal with the pressure of being at the auction and making a decision on the spot.
But as Partita says, you could get the same horse at the auction for less money. If you were an experienced horseperson, thatâs what you would do. I think the rescues add perceived value for less confident buyers, and part of that is in the story of this being a Rescue Horse.
They are clearly filling a niche. When I was a kid, we had low-end horse dealers who picked up horses hither and yon, and sold them on for a fairly small profit margin. I donât know if many people would want to deal with someone like this nowadays. Itâs the wrong story.
Iâm not trying to denigrate the rescue movement in general, I just find it an interesting development. I know people who are paying $600 or $700 to adopt street dog mutts from Mexico or Thailand.
Itâs a real catch-22, but I think the Auction Horses folks are filling a niche. I donât believe that the horses that they post about would sell any other way. I am an experienced horse person and I find the stress of the actual auction to be very intimidating. Just that extra couple of days of several more people giving their opinion, noticing conformational issues that I missed, visiting the horse and commenting on it social behavior, etc. â it can be very reassuring. Itâs just sad. I have gotten a horse from the kill pen post-auction, and a pair of donkeys from the auction itself. None of it is fun, but itâs less fun for the horses.
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I think you are right about some people buying the âstoryâ, OP.
I have seen a number of horses listed on craigslist for months beforehand, usually for $500-1000. No sales. Owners end up taking the horse to the auction, KB buys it up for what I would guess is no more than $300 on the high end of things, it gets listed on one of these âsave the slaughter horses!â pages and then somebody pays as much or MORE than the original owner was asking when privately listed to âsaveâ it. I guess it depends on whether or not you care whose pocket your are lining in the first place.
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Another take on it is that auctions are overwhelming. The sheer number of horses that are bred without any regard to whether they will find a home is staggering.
auction horses allows people to view a smaller number of horses and take one home. They do a limited evaluation of the horse. You are able to have a Vet look at it.
if there was a good definative solution to this problem I think we would all jump on it.
I am glad I went the Auction Horses route. I did it for my heart not for any kind of public approval. The horses I have from here although initially untamed terrified animals now come running when I call them. They arenât rescues to me. They turned into beautiful, shiny, affectionate, well behaved riding horses.
When you decide to try to pick where to clean up your litte corner of the world there are no clean decisions. My path isnât for everyone but it worked for me.
And I paid less for each horse than those rescue dogs and cats cost these days!
Rescue has become a weird political word and I donât like it either. In the beginning these horses may have been rescued but now they are just âMy Horsesâ. They may have had a rough start but that isnât who they are now.
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Sounds like a legit rescue. Go save a life, OP.
Heads up the OP is from Dec 2015âŠ
Understand it is an old post.
It sounds like legit operation. But Iâm not horse shopping. Iâve got a horse, and co-incidently she did originally come out of a low-end local auction as a two year old, nice horse, too much for her owners at the time, my coach bought her. We donât call her a rescue, though. She is just a horse that got sold at auction.
I think horse auctions have since been discontinued locally.
