Where the Rescued Horses Roam Free

In any given week, Sara Ruggerone receives as many as 30 requests to rescue someone’s horses. She’s lucky if she has enough space to accept even one.

“If we had accepted every horse that we were contacted about, we would have thousands of horses in our sanctuary,” Ruggerone says. 

Ruggerone is the Equine Care Manager at Redwings Horse Sanctuary, a horse rescue and sanctuary facility that relocated this year to the rolling hills of Paso Robles. Ruggerone has been active in the equine care industry and she owns five horses of her own, all of them rescues.

Redwings operates on the front line of one of America’s most rampant but little-known tragedies: the neglect, abuse, and slaughter of horses. In the last five years alone, more than 370,000 American horses were shipped to their deaths in foreign slaughterhouses.

There are a lot of reasons why horses need rescue. There are people who lose their jobs and can no longer take care of their horses. There are exasperated owners who discard horses for behavioral problems. There are even people who can’t make the commitment to take care of a horse after its rideable period, even though a horse typically lives 10-15 years past its “useful years.”

Whatever the reason is, Redwings Horse Sanctuary is there to educate people about the widespread problem of horse abuse. And its 140-acre spread serves as a permanent sanctuary for more than 70 horses, some of which were rescued from the “slaughter pipeline.”

“We have horses of every age, breed, and size,” Ruggerone says. “You name it, we have it or have had it.”

Before this year, Redwings operated from a 167-acre ranch in southern Monterey County. The move to Paso Robles was a strategic one. “When we knew our lease was ending, we had a vision to move closer to town where we could get more volunteers and visibility and be a little bit more connected to the community,” Ruggerone says. 

By being closer to Santa Barbara, Redwings will be in a stronger position to raise awareness about its programs. In its first year alone, the organization wants to significantly increase its volunteer numbers and continue to increase the number of horses they can adopt.

“We have a lifetime commitment to each horse,” Ruggerone says. “But every horse that’s adopted into a loving home makes space for another horse.”