Hailey

My name is Hailey and almost nobody knew I existed, until recently. 

I’m 12 years old now, and all I can remember of my life so far is a laboratory. All my body knows is abuse, over and over and over again. 

Horses like me don’t get to see the sky, feel grass, forage and browse for food, or know the companionship of a herd. We are kept in a cold, lonely, sterile environment so that humans can use our bodies as playgrounds for their own curiosity. 

There are lots of ways in which horses like me are abused, for me it’s for my hormones. They want to use me to create and test hormonal treatments. That means keeping me almost constantly pregnant, against my will. Every time I give birth to a child they are taken, and a new child is put inside me. I don’t know where they take my children and every day my heart breaks with the thought that they are imprisoned and abused just like me. 

But now, for the first time, I feel hope. For the first time I have discovered some good in the world. I have been rescued. Kindness Ranch Animal Sanctuary is somewhere animals like me find a new life beyond the laboratory walls. Today I can walk under the sky and meet other horses. I am still sick from what they did to me in the labs, but now I know care and kindness for the first time in a place that lets me be myself, not just a piece of laboratory equipment. 

Most horses like me don’t get to feel the sun and the wind; they die in the labs that they lived. I am proof that it doesn’t need to be that way. I hope more horses like me find freedom. I hope my lost children can join me some day under the free sky. 

My name is Hailey. I am someone. 

Hailey’s story was first published by Lady Free Thinker, whose supporters helped to fund her rehabilitation.