I don’t have a problem with their means of euthanasia.
I have a big problem with the abundant evidence that they are taking in far more horses than they can handle or adopt out, and are solving their over-population problem by “euthanizing” horses that could have had a good life with someone who was ready for them.
The method of derailing by changing the subject and misstating the objections is an old one, tried & true, and sometimes it works. But not with me.
So as someone from east TX who is still not over what happened to those horses from Louisiana …
In the equine rescue crisis being left behind by Harvey, with offers of rescue from all over the nation, if this particular set of “rescuers” shows up in TX … as the Houston police chief said, THIS IS TEXAS. Don’t even think about taking advantage of the situation. That would be a serious lifetime mistake.
The word will be going around about HC from California. People are not in a good mood about other people who profit on misery.
Wow. I just looked at their website and it looks so convincing.
This reminds me of the thread from a few days ago discussing the idea of the OP’s friend setting up a 501© to help her care for her herd of oldsters. From the point of view of donations, I think a sanctuary which gets a fixed number of horses and just keeps them is easier to check out; ten or twenty horses in, same horses year after year, easy peasy for a donor to visit and check out conditions.
But those giant organizations which report taking in and adopting out hundreds of horses, changing horse names, collecting money for all sorts of different purposes, vet bills, euthanasia, gelding fees, training fees, trailering and transporting, different fees and expenses for acquiring the horses and adopting them out, mysterious disappearances… it’s just too confusing and hard to monitor for the average donor. It’s disheartening.
However, I also know plenty of large organizations which will happily provide evidence such as receipts, vet bills, photos of horse progress, detailed accounting of which donations were made for a specific purpose, etc. The places that are confusing and hard to monitor are disorganized and cannot provide documentation to back up their claims. In some cases that’s just someone in over their head, but in other cases it’s purposeful smoke and mirrors or a shell game and hope the donors are just too confused to ask any questions.
And even if it is someone in over their head… that’s not a good recipe either.
Having more than you can handle is how horses slip through the cracks and end up in bad places, even when a rescue is their guardian and supposedly making sure they are saved and then stay safe.
It’s the later, insuring they STAY safe, that too often gets lost in the frenzy to save more.
The slaughter plants will process the number of horses they need to process to fill the demand.
End. Of. Story.
If you save 10, 100 or 1000 from the pipeline, another 10, 100 or 1000 will go in their place.
Meanwhile the killbuyers you’re saving them from are getting rich selling them to you at many multiples of what they paid for them at the sales.
{all ‘you’ should read ‘g-you’
So true.
And then you have to ask yourself why the pushback and negativity when someone does ask about their financials, or about the general operations of the organization.
When an org. responds so negatively for questions anyone should be asking about a place like this… that tells you much of what you need to know.
In other words, Those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing.
HiCaliber themselves have admitted that the financial end of things is down, so it is no surprise to see the top start to fall apart. Expect that this will be the first of a number of coming defections. Although it would seem they may be keeping the artful communications and penmanship of the one that is leaving, that is so good at appealing to heartstrings of potential donors.
The number of horses packed into clearly inadequate facilities without enough personnel to care for them all just staggers me. And yet these people are out there at the auction every week, relentlessly trolling for as many more horses as they can get their hands on.
The entire emphasis is more horses, more horses, more horses. Even though they haven’t been able to care for what they already have for a very long time. No surprise there are more disappearing horses, there is no other way to handle the incoming capacity.
How could such a scheme possibly work? The first-hand accounts finally tumbled me to the fact that making it work for the horses was never the plan. This is not a case of a rescue that has bitten off more than it can chew. It is not a case of a rescue that needs better on-site management. Rather, horses are being heartlessly used as pawns by – can’t think of a good enough, bad enough, word for these people. What else is so appealing, in such clear need, and so very available through the auction system? Every week? I finally clued in.
And now it seems that the cracks are becoming so large that collapse may be inevitable. While the horses are trapped there, without the basic care, food, water and shelter they need. Unless, of course, the numbers on the property go down enough to make it all easier, not to mention making room for a large new influx. This is beyond tragic.
The blog author is talking about “the next big ask”. I think those hurricane/flood rescue horses are just too hugely tempting. I can’t imagine they can pull off another one so soon after the last one … but of course, they don’t think like I do, at all.
Social media seems to be the last resort after all other law enforcement, regulatory and other official channels have failed.
I appreciate the blogger’s information and her writing is vivid and expressive, but would it kill her to use a paragraph now and then? The lack of breaks makes it difficult to read and detracts from her message, which is a shame, because the message is compelling.
I have off and on supported this group financially and finally decided to stop after one of our veterinarians suddenly stopped working there. It was abrupt and quick disconnect. I asked what had happened and he said that he was not going to support a group of individuals without ethics or that could not or WOULD NOT follow treatment protocols. This veterinarian is a very good man and an excellent veterinarian, and I am so glad he cleared away from this rescue. He was very giving of his time and resources with them.
My other personal thought is that I take offense to almost anything they say now. Everything is offered as a sexual innuendo or sexual favor, constant talk of Fireball, etc. As a mother of a daughter, I would NEVER take my daughter there to volunteer due to their obvious lack of morality. It is NOT edgy. It is gross, disturbing and inappropriate. Another point from my end is that I have no problem with the method of euthanasia, but as a TRANSPARENT rescue, there should be veterinarian documentation to end a horses life that people have donated money to support. Michelle is not a veterinarian and I have a problem that she will shoot one, then go get another, and “rally the village” for more money. I think that they have lost the definition between themselves and the rescue. They are all about the wrong things and I really suspect that there is a misappropriate of funds directly into their pocket. A “responsible rescue” as they continue to say, should ensure top notch care at home, and work on the adoptions and get those horses already in the system to homes. But they won’t. The money is in the shock value of saying that these horses are in imminent danger and then the funds roll in. If there is nothing in the auction that looks dire enough, they work side deals to get the bad ones to “rally their village” again. I am sad for all the volunteers and donors who really wanted to make a difference with HiCaliber. I think that it all started well enough, then greed took hold and something has gotten them off the tracks now. They are very manipulative and unfortunately a huge group of minions step up to wave their banner every day.
They now have a new vet that I also know, and he can’t get up to them all the time so they are deferring to themselves for evaluation of the intake horses. Scary and sad. I think if they just started posting the information on the Facebook page regarding vet reports, receipts from auction houses, etc…it would go a long way.
@TullyMars great post. I have nothing to add that hasn’t been said before, but am watching and waiting and hoping the authorities step in soon and shut down this “rescue” before more animals suffer.
Thoughts on Equestrian Chic Boutique endorsing HiCaliber on FB? I was unpleasantly surprised. 
HiCaliber and cohorts are convinced that Jen Marek is Shedrow. Which there really is no indication for that to be true btw.
So HiCaliber names a horse “Marek” and then Michelle proceeds to kill him. That bitty is psycho. Absolutely psycho!
Jennifer MAREK
Despite the fact I know where the skeletons are buried, I’ve been unusually tolerant of this nightmare excuse for a rescue, until now. Michelle Knutilla’s recent stunt of naming a horse after me and then making a point of talking about how he needs to die, is just plain psychotic. Scarily so. That horse may have been a compassion pull, but his death was based on pure malice. I know of at least one person who offered Marek a home, but there’s no way that was happening. Not after she decided she needed to shoot that horse in order to satisfy some sort of primal urge to kill something with my name attached to it. I like to think that horse knew an ounce of kindness before it was shot, but I fear the worst as Michelle clearly needed to manifest a special target in order to feel satisfied. How did it feel, Michelle? Was this one of your Top Five Favorite Killings?
#saymyname
#hicalibermarek
They have over 180 horses and keep going to auction to get more each week.
They went live on video yesterday to say they shot 5 horses and a cow yesterday.
Apparently they’re on a killing spree. That’s like 15 horses in 2 or 3 weeks
I seriously question how this is allowed to continue, and how, if law enforcement or AC cannot be prevailed upon to act in a timely manner, that someone has not gone to the media with this.
This is just so beyond the pale…
I posted several months ago when I came across this thread. I feel I must amend my opinion. Back in July, when I first stumbled upon this thread, I went back and forth over whether or not to read the shedrow blog. I chose to, but took it with a grain of salt. At least at first. The evidence of their shady practices seemed overwhelming. The author posted nothing without screenshots or video to back it up. Seeing as I had been off of Facebook for the better part of 8 months and hadn’t been following them, I logged on to my husband’s account, and went to their page. The difference was shocking. I remember watching them do intakes of their new horses with their vet. Now the intakes were just the rescue director. I remember them doing a surgery for an OTTB with a sesamoid fracture. Now they are euthanizing horses with “bone change” without so much as a diagnostic radiograph to confirm it.
For the record, I always questioned in the back of my mind how they could continue to go to auction each and every week and get more horses. But they always seemed to pull it off. So much more makes sense now.
Even more alarming is the fact that they have nearly double the number of horses on that property than they had a year ago when I visited it. I have spoken to multiple professionals in the area who used to work with them who no longer will.
I feel very strongly about the rescue director practicing veterinary medicine without a license, and have filed a complaint with the California Veterinary Medical Board. You cannot lance and drain a hematoma on someone else horse. You cannot perform regional limb perfusion. You cannot diagnose horses, give them a prognosis, and then make the decision to euthanize them. Unless you’re a vet.
I have officially changed my opinion of them, and would encourage anyone who is on the fence or unsure like I was to do their own due diligence and research. You will most certainly come to the same conclusion. They were once a good rescue, but have lost their way, and are likely unable to turn back. At this point, I think the only hope is to work to prevent them from acquiring more animals and to try and place the ones they have now.
That any ‘rescue’ would take advantage of this tragedy to do more ‘me, me, me’ bell ringing is sickening.
I knew these people were pathetic, I just didn’t realize how low they would go… disgusting
@luvmytbs, I’m grateful to you for keeping up the news on this “rescue”. I, too, am shocked that they are still in business. Rescuing horses just to shoot them, that takes a special kind of evil heart.
And with no auction this week, the grifters were out yesterday scouring through the “bad backyards” (what a joke, considering their facility) for compassion pulls and sickly horses despite having posted earlier about being unable to afford to geld a 6 year old cryptorchid stud with navicular, and needing to get rid of an Arabian mare they’ve had for 2 years and have done nothing with. (But they won’t let her go to someone they consider a ‘hater’ proving it’s all about ego to them)
Ah, hoarding at its finest.
The whole episode with Barbara is haunting me.
I’m not american but I believe small rescues who can keep their horses in good order and provide the necessary bookkeeping etc to donates and goverment. To be honest these guys seem like horse traders who buy from kill buyers and claim to rescues based on this fact alone which in my option doesn’t make you a rescue it makes you a trader(nothing wrong with that just be honest about it). and they seem to have WAY to many horses which real rescues need to investigate.
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