October 4, 2006 - Eleven Habitat Horses Find Their Forever Home With Willie Nelson

This is really worth sharing and makes me very proud to be a member and on the Board of Directors for Habitat for Horses.

Chris Dunn,
North Florida Horse Rescue, Inc. President
Habitat for Horses, Board of Directors, Southeast Emergency Coordinator

A note from Jerry Finch, President of Habitat for Horses: 

A few of us have been working on a situation involving a few paint horses that were the only horses left from an auction last year. These horses, from the special stock of one of the founders of the APHA {American Paint Horse Association}, were to be auctioned after the owner died last year. The auction was rigged and most of the horses went to slaughter. Many of them were pregnant mares. We were able to save 12 of them. This story was covered on ABC's "Night Line" a few weeks ago. Julie found out about these horses during her work on the slaughter issue and arranged for us to obtain them right before they were being sent back to the auction, where they would have followed their herd mates to the slaughterhouse. Thanks to her efforts, a small group of us headed north, loaded the horses and stored them for a couple of weeks at Linda A's. Of 301 horses, as far as we know, these 12 are the only horses left alive from that group. Eddie Killroy of XM Radio is adopting one of them. Willie {Nelson} adopted the other 11. We delivered them to his ranch this morning.

For those of you with Windows Media Player, here's Julie's video of the horses. We were shocked and extremely happy when we found out that Willie sent the below email to all his friends and to the Associated Press this evening.

Jerry {Finch}