Save beautiful horses from slaughter! HELP NOW!

An early morning last week I drove along the road where I live and noticed a handwritten sign showing “horse riding” 200m into a small alley. As I have a little daughter who loves horses I followed the sign that would bring me to a very sad place. I found some roughly build concrete boxes build in the mud with very skinny horses.

Over the next hour I learned from the stable boys that the owner had run out of money. And during the global Covid crisis and no money from tourists to make he left the stable behind in January without any plan to return. He left without any care for the horses and peoples well being. He wasn’t able to pay salary to the workers for 4 months now and had not bought any food for the horses either. The people who work and sleep there are from other islands in Indonesia only reachable by plane, but have no money for flights to go home. Their only food has been plain white rice and a coffee once a day.


In  total there are 3 ponies and 8 horses. One pony had a painful and bleeding injury on his leg.
The other pony has now loss of eye sight due to extreme malnutrition and an untreated eye infection. When we took him out of his box he wasn’t even able to make some steps, his muscles and joints were so weak and stiff.
There is a beautiful black stallion, he is in a lot of pain from a bad infection in his belly and testicles, also untreated for months.
I paid for the vet to check on each horse and we started treatments immediately. They have been improving now gradually during the past week. All other horses are skinny but have no other health conditions, the vet is sure with some dedicated care and food they will all be well as they are young horses :)

The staff is living in inhuman rooms, build from ply wood, metal and cardboardboxes onto the bare dirt. No flooring, no proper roof, it is raining inside and its impossible to keep it clean. They sleep without beds or mattresses on the floor.

This was way too much for me to take care of alone and luckily some beautiful friends are helping now every day with feeding, cleaning and walking the horses.
We are dedicated and committed to their longterm rescue and wellbeing.

We were able to locate the owner and had a few meetings with him. He wants money, either we buy the horses from him to rescue them or he has no other choice but to sell them to the butcher now :(



We do not want this to happen and all came together to help.
To rescue the horses and workers we came up with the following plan:


FIRSTLY, to rescue the horses we need to buy them from the owner and he already agreed. We found a few options to lease land here, some beautiful plots with trees and forest access. We would need to put a fence around the plot, build an open living stable where the horses can graze outside on the field and choose to have inside shelter whenever they like. Also the staff needs a proper enclosed accommodation for sleeping and cooking. We would be able to pay proper salaries to the staff for 5 months.

(35.000Euro required)

Some of the horses who aren’t blind or injured will be fit for riding in 3 months when they have gained weight. With this the running costs can be covered. There isn’t any natural horsemanship place here on the island that uses horses for therapy like autism, traumas etc. so this could be a beautiful concept instead of just typical tourist rides.


SECONDLY, (the long term vision) if we manage to raise more funds we would like to build: a farm sanctuary to run retreats for people with health problems like trauma, chronic diseases, obesity, stress, post cancer recovery, autism etc to stay and reconnect to themselves. To spend time in nature with horses, freshest organic on the farm grown food and time for their inner well being.


This way the farm can be self sustainable and is not dependent on ongoing donations and funds to be raised. While at the same time giving back by helping humans to heal and create jobs for the local community.  This would be an alternative to 'using' the horses for riding but integrate them in connecting with people and support well being.

We are committed to create an amazing  place for much needed healing. (50.000 EUR required)+

To get more detailed insights and up to date information check out my Instagram @lauraweyel
See everything we did so far in my stories or highlights.