Horse rescue rehabilitation can generally speaking fall into three stages, for good reason. That is, there’s not a lot of point in calling a massage therapist for a horse that needs urgent surgery. And there’s not a lot of point in trying to train a horse that is weak, in pain and sick. There’s a hierarchy of needs in rehabilitation that roughly follows the following pathway.

Stage 1

This stage is about keeping the horse alive and healthy, and is made up of:

1. Emergency intervention, such as removing a horse from a dangerous situation, critical feeding regimes for severely emaciated horses, or providing urgent veterinary care. For example, when our orphan foal, Bojangles, arrived, he was seriously dehydrated and exhausted and needed tube feeding to get him back up on his feet. When our first rescue, Charlie, came into care, he had a fractured fetlock and needed urgent surgery, without which there was no point moving him onto new levels of rehab. When another of our first rescues, Lincoln, came into care, he had been starved so long he needed specialised feeding to get his digestion working again and put a halt to the downward spiral of ill health.
2. 

   Max's blind eye needed to be removed as soon as possible.

   Meeting important needs that have likely been neglected. For example, surgeries that are very important, such as removing an eye that is degrading (e.g. Shetland pony, Max, or Tara, who had eye cancer); or gelding a stallion whose behaviour makes him difficult to manage. It also includes dentistry, farrier work, vaccinations, antibiotics for infections and wound management, treatment of Qld itch, and feeding to (likely) put on weight.

Stage 1 also includes a lot of admin work for our team, with paperwork, transport, vet and specialist’s visits, microchipping, photographing, assessments, rearranging paddock routines and so on taking up a lot of time and organisation.

Stage 2

In Stage 2, we’ve past the critical phases and begin consolidating the work begun in Stage 1. This stage is largely about improving what we achieved in Stage 1 (i.e. keeping the horse alive and healthy, and halting downward spirals of ill health) and setting him/her up to bring their best feet forward into the world. A lot of information gathering happens in this stage as we’re still working closely with the horse but the immediate pressure and intense time commitments are relieved.

• Hoof issues, for example, may take a long time to correct. For example, Tansy
  

  Tansy's hoof rehabilitation took around 8 months

  arrived with significant seedy toe (white line disease) that required eight months of hoof rehabilitation.

• Feeding regimes may need to be altered at this stage as the horse has begun to put on weight (or lose it, in the case of an obese horse). We’re also likely to introduce supplements (herbs, minerals and vitamins) as the horse’s individual needs become apparent.
• In this stage, we’re likely to see behaviour changes as the horse starts to feel better and this is a great time to get a sense of how the horse thinks, reacts and behaves. We might start to ask a bit more of the horse in this time, experiment with different ways of communication with the horse, begin to uncover his/her ‘quirks’ and make some decisions about their future.
• We also may begin to introduce some therapies that we feel the horse may benefit from (e.g. massage, chiropractic work, natural therapies etc.). [A point on natural therapies: sometimes, a natural therapy such as Rescue Remedy or Reiki can be used right from the start, at the same time as veterinary care, especially if extreme stress is playing a part in the horse's current state of health, or shock is a factor.]
• Herd dynamics might also be explored in this phase (i.e. how the horse reacts in different herd groupings).
• Foals may be weaned and gelded.

Stage 3

If a horse is still with us in Stage 3, the immediate pressures of meeting their physical and safety needs have passed and we’re beginning to look to their future. In this stage, we might:

• Send a horse for rehabilitation training and development.
• Continue to work on some unresolved issues while still working towards finding them an appropriate forever home with the perfect person who can either continue their progress or manage and accept them just as they are.
• Start to get enquiries and visits from people interested in adopting them.
• Have them fully integrated into our own personal horse herds and manage them in accordance with the way we manage our own horses.
• Continue to love and care for them while we patiently wait for the perfect home to present itself.

How long a horse takes to move through these stage depends on multiple factors, including the specific types of issues they arrived with, their age, their background in terms of handling/training, how severe their issues were, and their own unique requirements.