Morninstar Farm is a non-profit horse rescue started by Nicole Yiannos and her husband Dimitri. Nicole has always rescued horses from the "killers" even before she was a non-profit always believing that good horses deserved a second chance for a loving home.
Many people have naively taken their beloved horse friends to the auction where they believe that some gentle soul is waiting to adopt their friend as a new horse companion. What many of us don't realize is that the primary buyers have been killer buyers who bid the lowest price and will take almost any horse (show quality or lame) to rendering plants for a meat market price. What Nicole saw were good horses being needlessly shipped and began to seek homes for these horses.
From this Nicole created her non-profit using proceeds from sold horses to buy as many other sale horses as she could before they were shipped.Sometimes this was a balancing act, asking for horses to be held back hoping and praying (often calling friends) to help buy horses that should never be sent to slaughter.
On one occasion I remember a late night call asking me if I knew anyone who might have some room or money to rescue 40 young paint horses, several of which were brood mares in foal. The story (a divorce), had left all of these top quality horses in a precarious predicament and their lives in peril. Nicole managed to save about 7 of them and the rest were shipped. All of us felt this profound sense of loss, knowing that with more funds we could have saved more horses.
So as I write about Morningstar Farms and the incredible service Nicole does for the horse world, I can't think of anything more deserving than an organization dedicated to the interest of our equine friends finding new hope and new homes.