A dappled grey horse with a halter stands in the foreground, while a blurred stable interior with wooden beams and corrugated metal forms the background.

🌟 ¡Únete a nosotros para crear un cambio! 🌟En WILD EQUINE COLLECTIVE sabemos que el cambio comienza con personas como tú. Cada acto de bondad, cada dólar y cada momento de tu tiempo nos acerca a lograr nuestra misión. Juntos, podemos crear un mundo más brillante y compasivo para todos los equinos, humanos y la tierra. Cómo puedes ayudar a impulsar nuestra misión:<ol><li>Donar: Cada dólar cuenta. Contribuye ahora para ayudarnos a alcanzar nuestra meta.</li><li>Compartir: Comparte nuestra campaña con tus amigos, familiares y en redes sociales. Tu defensa puede amplificar nuestro impacto.</li><li>Voluntariado: Tu tiempo y habilidades también pueden hacer una diferencia.</li></ol>Gracias por apoyar nuestra misión, tu apoyo es invaluable.

Donate to Support Rick

Rick's Story: The First Horse of WILD Equine Collective He wasn't supposed to make it past his first night. Rick was born at home in The Dalles — small, weak, too sick to stand. The vet's advice was blunt: give him the night, see if he pulls through. He did. The next day he was rushed to Oregon State's veterinary hospital, where he spent 10 days on IV fluids just to stabilize. Back at home, he nursed on his mom until he was five.For his first ten years, that's who Rick was: a backyard horse who took it slow, stayed close to his mom and half-sister, and only knew soft hands. Then everything got loud. In 2024, Rick moved to the Willamette Valley — new home, new expectations, and a body that had never learned how to cope with pressure. His first real training session sent him straight into fight/flight. He started pawing, slamming his body against stall walls, urinating constantly from stress. He flinched at plastic bags and shadows. Nighttime made him worse, not better.Here's the part that should stop you: under saddle, doing actual work, Rick seemed fine. Drill practice. Flag work. Loud events with music and crowds and cars — he was often calmer in chaos than he was standing still in his own stall. That's not a training problem. That's a horse in pain, and nobody could find where. The pain was real. It just wasn't where anyone was looking. Rick started going lame — sudden, mysterious, non-weight-bearing overnight, then sound again days later. Standard exams found nothing. It took an 11-hour visit to Oregon State, full sedation, and extensive imaging before anyone found it: an old, previously undetected fracture in his hock.By then, the not-knowing had already cost him. Attempts at stall rest meant to help him heal instead spiked his anxiety past what he could handle. His feet, his handling, his whole nervous system had absorbed the fallout of being a horse in constant pain that no one could name. Where he is now Rick is on sanctuary property. For the first time, nobody is asking him to perform, tolerate, or hold it together. He's living with a herd, decompressing, and slowly being introduced to cooperative care — where he gets to say yes or no to being handled, instead of pain and pressure making that decision for him. His nervous system is starting, for the first time in years, to actually settle.He is the first horse in the WILD Equine Collective program. What we build around his rehab — the protocols, the patience, the trust-first approach — becomes the blueprint for every horse who comes after him. What your gift funds Rick's care doesn't stop because the crisis did. Ongoing hoof rehabilitation, bodywork, saddle fit for his specific conformation, veterinary follow-up, and the slow, unglamorous work of cooperative care training — all of it is ongoing, and all of it is what "sound" actually costs, long after the emergency is over. Your donation doesn't just support one horse's recovery. It launches the model WILD Equine Collective is built on: horses aren't broken behavior problems. They're often just unheard. Help us keep Rick — and the horses who come after him — sound, safe, and able to have a say.

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WILD Equine Collective

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