Do you have a favorite horse at the rescue that you would like to support?

Your tax-deductible monthly donation will provide hay, grain and shoes for the designated horse for each month of your sponsorship. With your donation, you’ll receive a sponsorship card with a photo and brief bio of your horse.

Make a direct impact on the lives of our beautiful rescue horses by signing up for a monthly sponsorship

Full Sponsorship is $500/month. This amount covers feeding/turnout/maintenance for your designated horse.

Partial Sponsorships are $250/month and $100/month and partially cover feeding/turnout/maintenance for your designated horse.

Horses currently available for sponsorship:

*Please include the name of the horse you would like to sponsor in the checkout notes on Paypal*

From Kill Pen to Champion

Bergen County Horse Rescue Morgan Finds Love and Blue Ribbons

By Anne G. Barretta, BCHR Communications Director

Thanksgiving Day almost five years ago, BCHR founder/president Erin Giannios received a phone call.

An emaciated brown horse had been bailed out of a local kill pen several weeks prior but no one had claimed him. As the weakest horse in the group he was getting nudged away from the hay and developed severe anxiety as he was not getting enough to eat. The other horses picked on him, and he was huddled in a corner.

“I was literally just sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with my family, but I immediately felt we had to help this horse,” said Giannios.

BCHR volunteers and the community were notified and gathered quickly to build a makeshift quarantine turnout into which this timid horse limped the day after Thanksgiving. He was named Lazarus as he rose above his dire circumstances and would now begin a new life.

After several weeks Laz began to gain weight and was placed in a herd environment with several other horses. He bonded closely with Papichulo, a semi-blind Appaloosa. Laz was soon seen racing around the fenceline of his turnout, snorting and tossing his head. Even the other horses looked on, seemingly amazed at his transformation.

Laz grew a healthy, shiny coat and with his compact, muscular build, started to resemble a Morgan, which is a particular horse breed. Although physically rehabilitated, Laz never lost his anxiety of being in a herd dynamic: he was more of a people horse. He needed his own person.

Lynda Rufo, one of our generous supporters who had bonded with Laz, did some research including a DNA test. Laz was indeed a registered full-bred Morgan from champion lines and his real name was Lighting Spitfire Toby. She alerted Giannios and they contacted BCHR’s Executive Board about adopting Laz out.

“As successful as Laz’s rehabilitation was, I knew he needed more,” said Giannios.

The decision was made and Rufo began to contact local Morgan horse farms who spread the word.

Enter Sarah Tetzlaff and her daughter Naria, who live on a 100-acre farm in Vermont.

Sarah had recently lost her own Morgan and was looking for another horse that Naria, age 10, could ride. She learned about Laz and contacted Giannios. Paperwork was completed, letters of recommendation were sent and before long Sarah and Naria traveled to the rescue for the first of several visits.

Naria and Laz formed an instant connection and, on her 10 th birthday, she became Laz’s special person.

“Laz now had a young girl to call his own,” said Giannios. “We knew Naria was the right fit for him.”

Sarah agrees.

“Laz is a little goofy, a real in-your-pocket kind of horse,” she says. “He’s living his best life with Naria, who is always with him.”

Naria rides Laz a half mile to the family’s mailbox, swims with him the farm’s lake and even rides him to the local ice cream parlor, where the owner gives him water in a metal bucket!

And now this little brown castoff that no one claimed has become a 4-H blue-ribbon Champion!

“As sad as we were to see him go, my heart is so full to watch his joy at finding his person who loves him dearly,” said Rufo.