I saw a post on Facebook regarding the SRF recently euthanizing quite a few horses. Does anyone know about this? Was it just a disgruntled person posting lies? Or did they euthanize horses that were unadoptable?
Does anyone know the truth?
Please don’t turn this into an argument over slaughterhouses; there’s enough threads about that. I am just asking about the SRF.
Look at their Facebook page. They explain what horses and why. The only people who know the truth are the ones that were there involved in their care and the final decision.
Personally, while I hate the fact they had to put down the horses they did, they were doing better by them than letting them go on in a bad way and spending resources that could be used to save others. I believe, if memory serves they have rescued over 500 horses this year. That’s a lot! You’re going to have to let some go.
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Yeah I have and there are some some comments that are eyebrow raising
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On this forum, folks are understanding about the need to put down suffering horses that belong to private owners. I don’t see why we’d be more upset about a rescue doing so.
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Didn’t they get quite the number of older horses in poor condition dumped on them recently? Seems like I saw a lot of that on their social media this past year. It only makes sense that they would need to euthanize the ones who were not in condition to be adopted.
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Oh I absolutely agree about euthanizing unadoptable horses. However, if you look at the comments on their FB page from SRF, it seems as if there is more questionable issues than the eithanasia situation.
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I’ve always been a bit wary of SRF as an organization. I think they use sensationalist fundraising methods and I feel that their adoption contract is too strict. I also feel that kill pen rescuing ultimately does not solve the problem of horses going to slaughter. I don’t always feel that they are being 100% honest when I interact with them, and so I chose to not adopt from them. I do donate semi-regularly. At the end of the day, they can set whatever terms they want for adoption and they seem to have plenty of happy adopters.
Regardless of why they put the horses down, I don’t necessarily disagree with it. A lot of their horses are pulled from slaughter and I feel that humane euthanasia (even if it is a bit early) is better than a horse suffering.
When I saw the euthanasia post, I poked through their reviews (and read the replies from SRF) I think its enough to worry me given my previous impressions. Some critical comments of SRF I’ve seen seem absurd, some seem plausible. I can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right there, but I hope I’m wrong. At the very least SRF does not come across as forthcoming. Hopefully they are able to find a way to clear the air. In the meantime, I’ll be donating elsewhere.
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I have a bad taste in my mouth about SRF. Weekly (well, I don’t know about recently, but last year) they were pulling sometimes dozens of horses each week from sale pens (advertising them as kill pen rescues for fundraising purposes). I don’t know what their set-up is as far as providing for these horses. Fosters? Farms? Not sure, but it seems like an awful lot of horses going to them, I’m not surprised they had to euthanize some.
They rubbed me the wrong way last year when I purchased a standardbred gelding from Moores an hour before the supposed “deadline”. They had been fundraising directly for this horse (as they did many of the horses). Not a general fund, but took his photo, shared it on their pages as fundraising to pay bail for a home offer. I bailed the horse in full, they continued fundraising for him and raised the full amount. I did a google search on his registered name a short time after bringing him home and came across their fundraising post for him on the SRF facebook page. I asked them a) if they were raising money to help bail for his home offer, why did that money not go to what it was advertised for? b) since I bought the horse with my own funds, what happened to the money they raised? The horse had significant expensive health issues (EPM, breathing problems) - that money could have been used to pay for treatment. I wasn’t irritated at the fact that they didn’t give me the money raised, I was irritated at the fact that according to their post they were raising bail money for that specific horse when in fact the money was not used towards that horse. They didn’t update the post stating he had a home offer or stating he had been bailed privately. When I asked about what the money was then used for, they stated it would go to helping other horses unless donors requested a refund. Donors had no chance to request a refund if they didn’t know the horse had been bailed. Just seemed really misleading to me.
I have heard RUMORS that SRF has an agreement with some pens, where they raise $$$ to bail a horse, then a short time later the horse ends up back in the a sale pen, with SRF again fundraising for the horse. I would HOPE that is not the case, but at the end of the day, that is one way to ensure funds keep coming in. Either the horse will have a private buyer and it’s off their feed ticket, or they will get bleeding hearts donating for the horses each week that they then split with the pen. Regardless of whats true and whats not, I’m not comfortable with their fundraising “policies” / claims, and not comfortable with the large number of horses they seemed to be taking in on a weekly basis.
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Agree, and my concern with this situation was not that they did euth, but that they put down something like 15 at once.
Does that mean all 15 needed euth that day? Or they waited on a few until they had that large a group to put down?
Or did they buy a whole batch that contained 15 that needed euth., and if so, what’s the story there?
The bigger problem aren’t those questions, but that those questions weren’t answered in the posts about these horses.
One should not have to ask about the situation, something that anyone could predict would look this bad should have had the organization being up front well ahead of this happening, and then getting leaked.
Transparency, that’s what builds a good reputation for organizations like this one.
They used to be more of a traditional rescue. What I’ve seen lately is them trying to save every STB that shows up on every feedlot site each week, many times with no homes lined up. The result of this is they have something like 400+ horses in their care, many of which are boarded. Imagine that bill every month. It doesn’t seem sustainable.
I’ve seen both rescues and individuals get overloaded and end up with piles of neglected horses themselves while trying to “save them all”. Many started with the best of intentions, but don’t know where their limit should be. Some get greedy for cash or praise. Meanwhile, the kill buyers line their pockets with the donated bail and the same number of horses ship as always (in fact, the number going to Mexico this year surpassed last year).
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Your experience is really concerning and disappointing. I hope for their sake that it was an isolated mix-up or miscommunication and not their standard operating procedure. 
My impression had always been similar to that of @furlong47. Years ago, I looked into adopting from them and they were more or less your typical rescue who used discretion when accepting and placing horses. Now they seem to have expanded to “save them all” and “the truck is coming” modes of operation, or at least that’s how it appears from their social media.
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