The Mare & Foal Sanctuary FAQs (frequently-asked questions)

No. We do occasionally take in pregnant mares so we do have foals born in the Sanctuary, but we never breed from our mares, nor do we allow our mares to be bred from whilst on loan. Our reasons are quite simple: There are more horses in need of homes than we can help, introducing new horses is simply increasing our problem.

A couple of reasons; Mainly we're on the edge of Dartmoor itself and many of our ponies come from there, either directly as a result of the annual pony sales (drifts), or secondarily because people have bought them there and couldn't look after them. The second reason is that we're actively involved in trying to reduce the Dartmoor Pony Problem.

Yes we do. We have actually won an award for this... If you are interested email Syra direct, you can find the address on the contact us section.

No. We do have retired horses at our Sanctuary, but these are horses we've had for a long time. Our work is primarily aimed at rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming horses. For each horse we rehome successfully it gives us space to rescue another. We think this is the best use of our resources and allows us to help more horses than accepting only retired equines.

As soon as I put a number here it'll be out of date, so please use the online horse database and look at the bottom - totals are listed there.

We require our volunteers to be at least twelve years old for legal reasons.

It includes helping with many aspects of horse care - grooming, leading etc.

Due to the specialised nature of our training, we don't allow volunteers to ride our horses.