OUR MISSION
Founded in 2011
VEWS was founded in 2011 when a group of horse welfare advocates decided to come together and save horses from the slaughter pipeline. Oftentimes horses being sent to auction end up being purchased by kill buyers who sell the horses to slaughter.
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Virginia Equine Welfare Society (VEWS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit horse rescue located in Hanover County, Virginia. We are a 100% volunteer-run organization dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, and re-homing horses in need.
VEWS is solely funded by caring supporters like you, and all donations go toward the care of our rescue horses. Our mission is to rescue and rehabilitate equines in need and to prevent equine abuse and neglect through education and community awareness. We provide safe housing, medical, and rehabilitation services to abused, neglected, abandoned, unwanted, and other at-risk equines and eventually, at the appropriate time, place them into caring, compatible, adoptive homes.
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This Mission is our heartbeat. It propels us to passionately do what we do every day. We dedicate ourselves to providing second chances for deserving horses.
WHAT VEWS DOES
RESCUE
VEWS was founded in 2011 when a group of horse welfare advocates decided to come together and save horses from the slaughter pipeline. Oftentimes horses being sent to auction end up being purchased by kill buyers who sell the horses to slaughter.
These rescues can range anywhere from ex-racehorses, to former pets, to abandoned and neglected horses. The slaughter process is cruel and MUST END. In addition to slaughter-bound horses, the group decided it was also accept owner-surrendered horses from owners who could no longer care for them. This prevents those horses from becoming part of the tragic slaughter pipeline.
REHABILITATE
Providing appropriate rehabilitation services for our horses is paramount to our Mission. Most of the horses that enter our program require specialized care. We work to provide each horse the proper nutrition, medical attention, and rehabilitation treatments needed so each horse can improve and recover both physically and mentally.
Many of our horses also need to be trained or re-trained, not just under saddle but also on the ground. We believe trained horses have a much better change of finding and keeping forever homes. We use a natural horsemanship approach when training our horses.
