Greetings,
I want to thank
the people who recently sent $100 donation to help cover the
hauling expense for Harvey Stewart and Zagnut to De Kalb. If
I can mention them by name next week I will publicly thank them!
WE have also received
a few $100 donations and $50 donations for the barn and general
fund. We are in the process of getting another estimate, but
I believe that by March we should be finalizing plans, and by
May we should have a new place built for the horses! This couldn't
be possible without support from the racing industry (IHHA in
particular) and the private donations we have been getting.
I want to thank Dan and Ursula Aspel, who donated $1,000 in
memory of Arlene Nystrom. This is very fitting, considering
that Arlene was one of the founding members of ASAP Inc., and
put horses first in her life until her untimely death in an
accident right outside Balmoral Park Race Track in 1997. Arlene
will never be forgotten, and with this donation her name will
be up for all to see!
Despite the good
things such as dreams of a new barn and indoor arena, there
is the reality of our financial situation. We are not an organization
that likes to whine about the state of our "union",
but we are spending $65 per day to feed the horses in care here
at our farm. Can you imagine that if all the foster families
out there decided to bring horses back to us, what the cost
would be? This is how valuable our foster farms are to our organization
- they give the horses quality of life and the attention and
care they need that wouldn't be possible otherwise. In order
to bring money in to ASAP Inc., we need to place horses. The
adoption fees go into a general fund to pay for food, veterinary
expenses, farrier, and so on. When we don't place horses (the
weather has not helped us at all the past four weeks), no money
is coming in. Last week, we had to put $2,000 on our credit
card in order to pay for all the hay we still owed on for the
past four months. We cleared our debt to our hay supplier, but
he ran out of hay for us. Now
the hay we are getting is OK, but not GREAT. We had so many
horses to feed this past year that our farmer went dry!!!!
Thank goodness
our vet expenses have been down for the past couple of months.
We have had a lot of healthy, sound horses placed and that meant
a lot to ASAP. We are still reeling from the vet bills incurred
last year when the Strangles came in via a shipper's trailer
to our farm and spread like wild fire. Then the complications
from the Strangles sent two horses to intensive care to the
tune of $1,300 each. Then there was the one case of Potomac
fever. Ugh, I just cringe when I think of what a year 2003 was!!
So, keeping our fingers crossed, our vet bills are lower.
We are headed
into the season when the Illinois Horse Fair, Mid West Horse
Fair, Minnesota Horse Fair, and Iowa Horse Fair are all coming
up. We are thankful to the Minnesota group, who are paying for
the horse fair entry fees this year. They hope to recover the
cost of this event by having a trail ride up in northern Minnesota
in May - details of this event should be coming up if they are
not on the web site already? Theresa Pendleton is organizing
the Mid West Horse Fair, and Irma Knowles is coordinating the
Illinois Horse Fair. I plan to attend all horse fairs this year,
so we will be busy shuffling the decorations and displays over
state lines left and right, and formulating scripts. It is a
fun but hectic time, and we hope to see you all in Springfield,
Madison, or St. Paul and possibly Des Moines!!!
Balmoral Park
will be blessed by the presence of ASAP Inc. this Saturday night.
Honey Fitz will appear in the grandstand area and be on display
for people to pet and love. This is costly for ASAP, but Terry
and Katie have thankfully volunteered to go to Balmoral on behalf
of ASAP and be our epresentatives. Hopefully we will sell a
lot of calendars!!! Which reminds me - please don't forget to
purchase a calendar for $15.00 . Your donation of $15.00 helps
us buy supplies and feed for the horses until they are adopted!
So call the office at 608-637-8045 or use Pay Pal to charge
one and we'll mail them out!
My students are
entering my classroom as I write you, so I will have to close.
I hope you enjoy the pictures of my puppy Mayatuk, although
he has grown a lot since these were taken!
Take care,
Susan
