Rebecca Husted, Founder TLAER

Rebecca Husted is one of the world's leading large animal rescue experts.  She has 25+ years Instructing, now sole owner of Technical Large Animal Emergency Rescue, Inc. - all aspects of Large Animal Disaster and Emergency Preparedness; 28 years of Military Experience including active duty mobilizations (Ft. Bragg) and combat deployments (Iraq & Kuwait); 22 years freelance writing experience; 20 years management and corporate experience running small businesses (Equine/Bovine Ltd. and TLAER, Inc.); completing my Georgia Certificate of Emergency Management. I know you will enjoy knowing more about this fascinating woman.

Transcript

Rose Cushing 0:30

Hi everybody, this is Rose Custer, and I'm the host of today's Horse Force Podcast. Really excited today. My guest is Rebecca Hooker, and Rebecca's gonna tell us how to save our horses. Now, Rebecca has a humongous reputation in large animal rescue, not like starving horses, but really animals that are in trouble with accidents and and mishaps and crazy stuff that happens. So I'm excited to have you on the show today, Rebecca. Can you tell the audience a little bit about you?

Rebecca Husted 1:02

Of course. I'm glad to be here. I live in Macon, Georgia now, and I've always lived in the southeast somewhere. And uh I get a chance to go all over the world and tell firefighters and veterinarians and horse owners about how they can extricate animals from the oh so many places that they suddenly end up in.

Rose Cushing 1:25

It's a great service.

Rebecca Husted 1:26

It's it's actually a lot of fun. I mean, it's terrifying at times and it's heartbreaking at times, but uh all in all I think in general we've been helping horses a lot.

Rose Cushing 1:37

Yeah. Well, I know when I used to raise horses and and have little ones, the the little weenlands were always into something. They were like two year old children and crazy things happen.

Rebecca Husted 1:50

Well, they roll underneath the fence and they end up in trapped in a a wheel hole that you think there's no way horse could fit through, or they end up in a water tank or something.

Rose Cushing 2:01

Yeah, mine got trapped under the fence and it was wooden and I had to beat the boards off with you know, get the nails out so I could get the idiot out from under it. But she was good and calm and she laid right there, but it was a scary situation.

Rebecca Husted 2:15

So tell us a little bit. In their normal life.

Speaker 3 2:43

Right.

Rebecca Husted 2:43

But let me tell you, there's nothing like having a horse that's easy to handle in a situation like a trailer wreck on the side of the road, and you there you are on the side of the road and you've got horses that you've got to get out of a trailer and leave put on another trailer in the middle of the interstate. Nothing pays off better than good trailing, just like anything else, Rose.

Rose Cushing 3:04

You're absolutely right. If I hadn't handled this Philly a lot and she hadn't really trusted me, that could have been a major disaster for both of us.

Rebecca Husted 3:12

Sadly, a lot of people lose young horses that way because when they get in something, they they fight it, they use their opposition reflex, they you know, they even if they get in a fence, they fight it.

Speaker 2 3:24

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 3:25

My torque, you've met torque before and my spotted Appaloosa. And uh one time I came home with a girlfriend, she was in the car with me, we came home and he had rolled in the pasture and rolled over, and I've got really safe fence. It's uh the full wire uh fence with three boards to keep the horses from going into it and keep dogs and things like that out of it. And somehow he managed to lay down, roll over, put his feet right through the fence, and he was laying there. And he had actually pooped at least twice while he was laying there.

Speaker 2 3:59

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 4:00

And that means he was there for at least 30 minutes, and so my girlfriend was like, Oh my god, what are we gonna do? And she started to go in a panic mode. I said, please go get a halter, and you go catch him. I'm gonna go cat get a piece of you know, the the fence fire tools. And so she came around and talked to him, gave him some treats, put a halter on him, and she did remark how difficult it was to put a halter on a laying down hole. She'd never done that before. Right. So there's another skill for you, but uh she got a hold of him, gave him some treats to keep him calm. The whole time I came at the fence from the other side, cut holes in the fence, and uh once we had the fence cleared up, she gave him a command to let rise up, and he was partially fleeing. Thank goodness.

Rose Cushing 4:43

And you know, I think a big part of that is keeping yourself calm.

Rebecca Husted 4:48

Oh, absolutely. That's and that's really crucial to anything. Now, you know, it's easy to say, a lot of people say, Oh, I'm I'm pretty calm in an emergency, and I go, Are you calm in emergencies with your kids? And they go, mm, because it's the emotional component. Uh I I have a joking thing that I say to people, you know, I can shoot your horse all day long, but because I I gotta shoot my own. I don't want to do that, right?

Speaker 2 5:15

Right.

Rebecca Husted 5:15

Um, it's the emotional component. And uh sadly, sometimes I do have to euthanize things, but I certainly don't have to euthanize my own.

Speaker 2 5:23

Right.

Rebecca Husted 5:23

And that's the problem with uh any kind of a situation with your horse. You may that be the calmest person in the world with everything else, but when it comes to emotional situations, so often I get these calls from people with a a horse in a situation, and you can tell that their voice is elevated, that they're really stressed, and the first thing I do is tell them, hey, okay, you gotta get a hold of yourself. Tell me exactly what's going on. The easiest thing to do is take about a 10-second video and a few pictures of the situation, so you can send them to your veterinarians, you can send them to your responders, you can send them to somebody that can help you over the phone. And you know, Tori and Justin McLeod in North Carolina, they're with my uh colleagues, and we do Mark Analysis stuff, and all of us get these phone calls, and that's the first thing we tell people. Please calm down, give us, tell us what's going on, send us a short video. You know, we gotta come up with a way to to handle this, and and dealing with it with somebody that's got their voice off the off the off the charts isn't gonna make anybody um more efficient at what we're doing.

Rose Cushing 6:33

Absolutely. I, you know, when I was breeding real heavy, I probably had 15 or 20 horses here at the time, and they could have a colic, they could have things happen, they could get gushed open, and I was calm as a cucumber, but I had this one mare that was my horse. And if she blinked her eyes wrong, I fell apart. And she was tough as nails. But it is a different situation when it's the emotional component is there, and you're useless sometimes if you don't really, you know, find the way to pull yourself together. I know many times with with patches I'd have to say, Hey, I'm all you got, so I got to get it get myself straightened out.

Rebecca Husted 7:13

Yes. Uh honestly I tell people, you can puke and you can cry later, but right now I need you to make some decisions. I need you to help me through, you know, figure out this this problem.

Speaker 2 7:25

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 7:25

Um, and and we can cry together lately later, but crying right now isn't doing me any good.

Rose Cushing 7:31

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Rebecca Husted 7:33

And actually what I tell emergency responders on the other side of that is if you're called to one of these scenes and you're having to deal with this situation and the person that owns the horse is out of their head, I tell them to put them in the cop car.

Speaker 2 7:47

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 7:49

Once you're in the cop car, there's there's not much you can do. And and really, that's the best reason for staying calm is so that you can stay and come up with some rational decisions for your horse. Make those kinds of decisions that you might have to make. I mean, those, you know, part of what I have to do in my what I teach and we teach mercy responders to do this is make a really tough decision early. Um, sometimes we do have to euthanize things, and I would much rather euthanize it in the hole or in the trailer um if it's got absolutely horrific things going on, than I would to flip that horse through 20 minutes or 40 minutes or two hours of trying to do an extitation and then have to euthanize it anyway when we already knew that it wasn't going to make it. And so we always talk about making that tough decision early and getting it out of the way. And then we can, you know, help everything else. And some of that comes down to triage, because you know, you've you've hauled more than two horses down the road. Um, there's lots of people that are hauling 10, 12, 14 horses down the road, and uh you have a trailer wreck with that, and somebody's gonna make some tough decisions. So who you're gonna save and who you're not gonna save.

Rose Cushing 8:58

And you know, if you think about it, it's just like for yourself as a human, it's almost like a living will. You know, you you don't want to be on a machine and and have to go through all that junk if there's not much hope of you live living. Think about your livestock in that same pattern, and what do you want for them and what would happen if these things came along and make a plan like you say.

Rebecca Husted 9:20

You and I have talked about that so many times. I think we talked about it the first time I met you.

Speaker 3 9:26

For sure.

Rebecca Husted 9:26

And, you know, that is a fundamental part of being a horse owner is making those decisions for yourself, making those decisions for your animals. And, you know, I'm over my fifties now, and all my friends are starting to talk about downsizing and and getting rid of stuff, and you know, do they wanna do they wanna raise any more more horses? You know, I can't imagine breeding horses in my late fifties because that horse can live for 30 years. What am I gonna do? I'd still be daughtering around at 85 years old. I hope I am. I mean, I really do hope I am. But we all know that most of us aren't gonna be taking care of forty horses when we're when we're uh eighty-five years old.

Rose Cushing 10:07

Absolutely. Absolutely. We um riding got really sick with COVID, you know, when it first hit, and we got rid of our horses, sold them and dispersed them to friends. We haven't brought any back home because I'm not sure that I you know, we're 66 and 67 now. I'm not sure that I want there was I'm not sure I'm sharp enough anymore to take care of them the way they need to be taken care of.

Rebecca Husted 10:33

Well, you had a good plan because you you made something happen.

Speaker 2 10:38

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 10:38

And there's a lot of people that aren't willing to do that, and that would be a whole nother talk is how to do things right on or some of the situations that I've seen done wrong where people failed to plan. But we always try to keep it positive and say, hey, I'm up with a plan, whatever that plan's gonna be. And if that plan's gonna be that your kids are gonna take care of the horses, we all know that that's that's crap. They're they're not gonna do that. There's so many situations where horses get tossed past onto the next generation and uh they do the wrong thing. Absolutely.

Rose Cushing 11:14

If they don't love 'em while you're alive, there's not much chance that they're gonna love 'em when you're gone.

Rebecca Husted 11:19

Exactly.

Rose Cushing 11:21

That's for sure. And you know, I have to stay on top of myself because I love 'em and I would love to have an a yard full. But I have one donkey. She's all I have here. And you know, she's pretty and she's sellable and she would be easy to move if something did happen to me. And my friend has bunches of horses and I love them.

Rebecca Husted 11:42

That's the way to have 'em. You know, that's what I did in college is I had friends with horses and my parents wouldn't let me take my horse to college, and of course I was upset about that. But when I look back on I go, My parents were so smart, you know what? I think parents are a lot smarter than we think they are sometimes.

Rose Cushing 11:58

I think so. Too bad we don't realize it until they're long gone.

Rebecca Husted 12:02

But uh, yes, exactly. So but some of the other things that people can do as far as trying to keep their animals uh out of trouble really comes down to having a critical eye and starting to look around your place. And you know, I sometimes talk to people that say, Oh, you know, my horse is is the horse that always gets hurt. My horse is the all the one that, you know, there'll be 40 borders at the place and my horse is the one that always gets hurt. And I go, Well, sometimes I think that comes down to her horse's personality, but sometimes that comes down to what are you doing that maybe making that possible for that horse? Um, are you not uh being careful with the edges of your saws? Are there are there you know the obvious things like truth sticking out or nails sticking out or something that's sharp that a horse can catch himself on? Or some of the some of the things that are not quite as obvious, like square corners in big pastures. It's really hard for a horse if he gets caught in the corner of a pasture and another horse is is uh trying to tell him what to do, he can get caught in that corner and then he panics. You know, he's afraid of getting bitten by that other horse or kicked, and uh he may try to jump out of that pasture. So little things like that that that some people never think about. Um, you know, and then even when they put horses out together, you know, I have 20 acres and very fortunate, and I've broken it down into seven paddocks. But if I bring a new horse here, I have a very stiff way that I get them used to each other. If I put the strange horse in a in a heavy-duty round pen that's made from Mustangs, he's in there where he's safe. Um the other horses are further away from him for a day or two and they can look across and sort of get used to the fact that he's on the property, and then I open the gates and let the other horses go out where they can go around the round pen, they can interact with the horse through the round pen. It's got safe panels where, yeah, technically they could put a leg through, but that's a much safer way than than him being chased all around the pasture. And then in between, I put the other horses back and I let him explore the pasture by himself so that he gets an idea of, you know, where are the the rough places and the hills and the trees and the sort of the lay of the land. And then of course, uh when I finally put them out together, I always do it in the morning. That way they've got all day to interact in the light where they've got a place to run, they've got plenty of ro room to run. And I see people put horses together in, you know, 24 by 24 panics, and I'm thinking, what are you thinking? I mean, that poor horse, whichever one's on the lowest end of the of the totem pole here, is gonna get hurt. And these people do this kind of thing. So, you know, some of that just comes down to, you know, experience. Some of it comes down to um thinking of what I you know, my mom, when I was a kid, I was a teenager, and my mom sort of had what if disease. She always like, you know, but what if this Rebecca? And what if that Rebecca? And being a teenager, you know, I've been live forever and everything was easy. So I sort of poo-pooed a lot of that. Well, guess what? Now in my 50s, I am the person with the what-if disease. And, you know, I look at those things now and I go, Well, what if this happened? What if that happened? Why don't we mitigate that by doing this or that? And taking those few minutes to look at it with a critical eye, just if your facilities, what are the things that you may be doing and you got away with it with your other horses, but when you bring that new horse or you inter have new horses interacting, or those kinds of new situations, um, that's when horses can hurt.

Rose Cushing 15:46

You're absolutely right about that. That's something that you know I was always very careful about with with my stalls, even when I had a new one built, you know, going in and making sure there wasn't any nail tips protruding and there wasn't anything he could trip over or hang his leg in, you know, or anything that would hurt him. Even the hook you hang your water bucket on, if you know, if if it's where he's gonna pass by it a whole lot, there's a danger he can get hung on that or hang his head up in that handle. Because trust me, if there's anything there, they'll find it.

Rebecca Husted 16:18

They will find it, they will put their head in it. I've they I've got really awful pictures of horses with eyelid injury from their bucket hook. Yeah. And you know, they're just noodling along and they're screechy-scratching their head, and next thing you know, they catch their eyelid on it, and for whatever reason, that's a classic injury. Uh veterinari call it um uh a an a bucket tear. Yeah. Because it's so common in horse eyelids. Absolutely. I know. But some of the some of the other things that you can do in your barn, uh, making sure that you have some thought process on, you know, do I have safe gates? Do I have safe, especially if I got your stall games? Um, do you have things stick out? Those latches that slide, I love those because they're quick and easy, but man, if you leave it sticking out and the horse comes through the door too fast, that is a classic injury.

Rose Cushing 17:13

Yep. For sure. And I I know the one thing that I got gigged on was uh T-post and you know, having the T-post top exposed, and they got in a fight and she got a bad gash, the shape of the top of the T-post, you know. So there's a lot of things that can happen that you you can mitigate, like you say. And believe me, it's worth taking that extra time to do those things first. And it's certainly cheaper.

Rebecca Husted 17:40

You know, the T-post is is a good one. That's a really good one. And that's you know, some of that is solvable with those little plastic tops that you can put on them, which I know they're gonna play with, and I know they're gonna remove them, and you're gonna have to put them back on there. Some people take glue and and glue them on because their horses are always pulling them off. I understand that's a pain in the butt, but you know, like you said, an injury to some one of those T-posts when they're playing around and one of them reared and goes to swing and and turn away from the other one, uh, those are awful. And veterinarians have horror stories of T-post injuries.

Rose Cushing 18:16

And really, and I mean you're talking about you ever tried tried to take a T-post out of the ground by hand? Oh yes. Not ever very successfully, but I I have Exactly. What are some other things that you think people could look at? Like out in the pasture, maybe.

Rebecca Husted 19:42

Okay, so big things out in pastures is if you have ditches, holes, those kinds of places that are something you can fill in easily or open up, you know, if it's a feet ditch and you open up the sides a little bit. Um, horses love to explore. I've got Actually, a trench out in the middle of my passion I use for my large amount of training, but I made it so huge that nothing can get stuck in it.

Speaker 3 20:07

Right.

Rebecca Husted 20:08

Um, and that's usually the problem. If it's a little split trench or something really small or a hole that they can flip and fall in, obviously they could break their leg, but they could also flip and fall in. Um, some people have places that they don't even realize are in their pastures. Um many, many years ago, one of my um girlfriends, she had a story of a horse that had gone down in a hole, put down a hole in in a 40-50 acre pasture, and the people reported it as stolen. They thought the horse was stolen. Well, turns out she had been scratching or whatever on a tree in this little place in the middle of the pasture and put down in this hole and she died there. They didn't find her until they found her carcass. Wow. And you know, they they hadn't done a good enough search, in other words.

Speaker 2 20:53

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 20:54

So sometimes you gotta look really hard, uh, especially people with rough pastures, and I don't have a problem with having tree cover and having all those challenging obstacles and those kind of things. But we see something horse can't go down in. So take a look at those kind of things, especially holes. Holes are notorious for hurting horses. Open up those trenches and think about your access to water. So, you know, I'm also an environmentalist, believe it or not. Uh I'm not a tree hunter. I don't consider my well, I do love trees enough to hug them. But anyway, uh, you know, we try really hard to protect those riparian areas in our streams and our you know lakes and and ponds. But it's always nice at my place I have uh an access for the horses to get down to water. They can get in the water if they can actually, there's enough room for them to lay down in the in the low in the end where it's about two or three C and they lash and they love it in the wind in the summer. Um the other day it was like 70 degrees here and they've all got their heavy coats on, and they were all out there splashing and swimming in the water and in January, you know, in Georgia. But you know, make a safe access for them and prevent their access to any other part of the of that. And what that means is you may have to fence it off, you may have to uh plant some trees, they're they're heavy-duty enough trees that the horses can't get through there into the the water area, um, and particularly muddy areas. Uh you need to prevent the animals from going in there in the first place. Right. Because that's what they'll leave. They'll go into those places and then they get trapped and they get themselves in trouble. And of course, if they're going into those muddy areas that they really shouldn't be in anyway, they're also destroying the soil, they're destroy destroying the environment in that area. So look up the riparian area and talk to your local extension agents about how you can do those things. Sometimes there's even grants out there so that you can protect your water sources so that the water is clean and the water is clear, um, and doing what you know those areas are supposed to do. Um, but I actually brought in sand and brought in some gravel and made an access where the horses can go and they can have a lot of fun and they can't hurt each other and they can't hurt themselves.

Rose Cushing 23:13

The gravel's a really, really good idea and sand.

Rebecca Husted 23:17

Yeah, I'm I'm fortunate here I've got loamy s uh sandy soil pretty well, but uh having this this gravel there sort of stabilizes the edge. And we just made an edge in the one part of the the I've got a small pond and then I've got a larger pond, and we just made a safe access so that nobody, you know, it's always the same old thing. If there's more than one horse, then you know somebody's gonna start kicking and jumping and doing all the crazy things they do or playing, and uh then they can hurt themselves. So give 'em plenty of room.

Rose Cushing 23:48

Very good idea. We had a situation in our pasture where we had two trees that were split down at the bottom, so they grew maybe two feet apart, but on the same trunk at the very bottom. And one of my fillies got between them. And I don't I can't I never thought that the idiot would go try to get between them, but I couldn't get out. And it then that was a mess because I wasn't real sure how to get her out. But um eventually I I got her out of it. But you know, that's something you need to look at too. If you have a split tree like that, you'll be a lot better off to go ahead and cut half of it off so that it's not that way like a V.

Rebecca Husted 24:30

Exactly. That's what I was gonna say. That's that is any of those Y-shaped trees or trees that are really close to one of them has yes, sorry. Uh, or choose one side of it and cut it off.

Speaker 2 24:40

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 24:41

Same way with uh, you know, fences. If you've got two places where there's two posts that are that are too close and and and a horse could try to sneak through those. Now I have a walkthrough at my at my place, and I love it. It's wide enough for me and um my rear end to get through, um, but it's at a 45 degree angle. And the horses do not try to go through that. I still protect it with it's got a gate. But there's no chance of a horse trying to do something stupid. Now, what's really funny is when I had llamas, the llamas would walk through that like it was no big deal. They're like they can they could walk right through it. But the horses can't do it, and I put a gate on there just to make sure that they don't cry.

Rose Cushing 25:24

Yeah, yeah, that's funny that the llamas wouldn't even have a minute's trouble problem solving that one.

Rebecca Husted 25:29

They had no problem. I mean, from the very first day they were here, they had no problem. I was like, okay, well now we gotta add a gate. And you know, the horses never tried it, but now I've got a gate. So that prevents the ever having that problem. But yeah, you're right. Some of those tight places. Um if the fire department gets there and you've got a situation like that, you know, they're probably going to either use a a chainsaw, which is difficult to do when the horse is there. Yeah. They're going to need to vess and sedate it. Um sometimes if the tree or the situation is is not as big as what you had, sometimes what they can use is a hydraulic ram and it actually spreads the tree trees apart at the top, and then they can can give a little bit of squeezing room for the animal to jump through. Um, but all those things, those things are are difficult to employ.

Rose Cushing 26:19

They are. They really are. And I was lucky that she wasn't so big that my husband and I could lift up her front end and kind of, you know, get her front feet off the ground into where it was wider so she could snatch backwards and take off, you know. I think if I remember right, that's how we got her out. But if she'd have been a big horse, I couldn't have done that.

Rebecca Husted 26:39

Exactly. And you'd be amazed how many people try to lift up the hind end and get kicked in the face. Oh yeah.

Rose Cushing 26:46

Yeah, I can I I was smart enough not to mess with that anymore. Yeah, and if you think about it, you know, the hind end's where all our s their strength is, and it's a lot smarter to let their weight roll back on their back end, then they can spin and pivot and you know, move.

Rebecca Husted 27:03

Exactly.

Rose Cushing 27:05

But that was an interesting situation for sure.

Rebecca Husted 27:10

While we're talking about pastures and access to your facilities and those kind of things, one of the things I always mention to people is making sure that you have a way to make sure that the fire department can find your place. And that means a reflective sign at the road with numbers so that it's easy to find from both sides of the road. Whether you're coming north or south, east or west, you can always see those numbers. And you need to be able to read those numbers at about 45 miles an hour, because that's that's the fire truck for this, or the EMS vehicle if they're coming for a medical emergency. And that's you know, that's one of the things people never really think about. They they still have a big fancy sign out front, but it's not reflective, and it has their logo on it and everything else. It may even have their numbers, but it's in black lettering against something that's not reflective. At night in the rain and snow, the fire department needs to be able to find your place to be able to help you with anything, whether it's a horse rescue or a medical emergency. Uh please, that's that is not inexpensive to it's not it's not expensive to do. Um you can call your local fire departments, they will have resources, and uh you can run down to your hardware store and get the reflective lettering, whatever you gotta do, but that is something that everybody that's listening to this can do today is get a reflective sign at the road for your facility so that you can actually have the chance of improving the response to use for the local fire department.

Rose Cushing 28:38

You know, another thing I was thinking about while we were talking, if you have a a little bit of acreage and the way your place is set up that you can't see your horse pastures from your yard where the fire trucks would pull in or an ambulance would pull in, you might want to consider putting up some kind of signage that would say, you know, barn this way or horses this way or something. Because if you got hurt yourself back.

Rebecca Husted 29:05

You know, a lot of people have that. You you know arena's this way, that's where we hold the horse shows, the barn is this way, that's where we have the horses in the barn. Um, absolutely, that would be very wise. Because anything that you know, fire trucks don't back up. They try to turn around. Yeah. And if anything that slows them down, uh is gonna lose response speed. And if that's somebody having a medical emergency or a barn fire, uh, or a horse that's trapped over a barn door, we uh we would prefer that that that they'd be able to get there faster.

Rose Cushing 29:39

For sure. And you know, a lot of times when I was filming TV shows with people, I'd get to their place and I wouldn't have ever known there was a horse pasture there. I mean, because it w you know, it was pretty, it was not ugly or junky, but I just wouldn't have known where to look if they hadn't met me out at the car.

Rebecca Husted 29:56

Exactly. Uh I have had that experience many, many times.

Rose Cushing 30:02

And you know, if you're in a situation like where I live in North Carolina on the coastal area and there's a hurricane and there's flood and any kind of thing that you can do to let rescue people know, you know, where on your property, you'd be smart to do that in advance because you won't think of it when the time is nigh. You need to do it now.

Rebecca Husted 30:23

Um exactly. Well, and you know, another part of large animal rescue really is making that coordination ahead of time with your local fire department. Have you there's so few horse people who've ever reached out to their local fire department and had them to their place. If you have them to your place and have them walk up and down your driveway and into your barn, they are going to be able to help you, you know, where is your main, you know, there's a lot of places that they don't have a main switch for their electrical on the outside of the barn.

Speaker 2 30:56

Right.

Rebecca Husted 30:56

That is the easiest way to stop a barn fire because a lot of times it's electrical. And if you can just throw the main switch, then you're not throwing as many sparks, right?

Speaker 2 31:04

Right.

Rebecca Husted 31:05

Um, that's one of the first things they look for. And if do you have you have gas, natural gas, do you have any other big hazards? Uh do you have an accessible driveway? And you know, we think about oh my gosh, we pull a four-horse, living quarters, whatever, through up there. Well, let me tell you. Do you think that turns turns like a barge? You've never seen a fire truck. Fire trucks are huge, they weigh 30,000, 40, 50,000 pounds, and they only like to drive on gravel, asphalt, and concrete. They don't like to drive off of those surfaces because way too many fire trucks have been planted in in muddy yards in the past.

Speaker 2 31:45

Yeah, for sure.

Rebecca Husted 31:47

And you know they they they need accessibility, they need a place to turn around, they they need, you know, can are there trees leaning over the driveway, uh all those kinds of things. And you can mitigate all those things just by having your fire department out to your place and having them take a look around. They're not going to charge you a tax. It doesn't cost you anything. It's called a pre-plan. Have them walk around with you and do a barn pre-plan, and that will solve a lot of your problems, particularly on the side of barnfire. And you know, I'm always I'm always preaching about barn fire prevention. But that is a fundamental part of it is getting your local fire department involved. So, hey, they know where you live, they know where your barn is. You know, if you've got kids riding around or or students or whatever, and there's a possibility of somebody breaking a leg or falling off a horse someday, uh, you're gonna need EMS there too. So have them be familiar with your place.

Rose Cushing 32:42

You know, I'm so glad you you brought that up because when I do another event, I'm gonna get the local fire department to come and do a talk about that because, you know, I didn't know that they would come and do that for me for free. I it had never crossed my mind. I'm glad that you brought it up, and you know, it's something I can continue to educate local people here about. And maybe in October when it's fire safety month, I can get the horse council to do some kind of program with them or something.

Rebecca Husted 33:10

That is fantastic. Those are the kinds of things that fire departments, we tell you, as a firefighter myself, I would much rather come out and tell you uh do a pre-plan, tell you the things that I think you could fix on your place, uh, all those kind of things, and I would be standing there, putting my arm around you and saying I'm really, really sorry.

Rose Cushing 33:30

Absolutely.

Rebecca Husted 33:31

Absolutely. We are all about the prevention and the mitigation, all that stuff. And and that's what most of the fire department tries to do is do that prevention and mitigation part. So you reach out to a fire department. Remember that 80% or more of our fire departments in the United States are volunteers. So it may be a pain in the butt to get a hold of them. You're gonna have to either find their website or make a couple phone calls and leave messages for a volunteer department. They're not there all the time. But if it's a paid department for a large uh city metropolis, then they will have an entire group of people that do uh public information, they reach out and do the fire prevention, they can teach people how to use a fire extinguisher. There's a ton of information that the fire department can help you with, and you're right. I don't know why horse people never think about calling the fire department because it's what your taxes pay for.

Rose Cushing 34:26

Absolutely. Absolutely, and that that would be just a really good connect the dots thing for me to do. So I'm glad you brought that up. My mind's racing with ideas about how to get that information out there. Maybe I can maybe I can make some kind of a brochure and put it in the feed stores or something. But I I'm gonna do something about that myself.

unknown 34:50

Awesome.

Rebecca Husted 34:51

If you need any help, you can always reach out to me. I will. There's a ton of resources that we have that I I can give you that you may be able to find some of don't have to reinvent the wheel, in other words.

Rose Cushing 35:02

Yeah, I can probably get some of my friends that have feed stores to do a little one-day thing at their place with the fire department and educate people. I think I can make some of that stuff happen.

Speaker 2 35:14

Fantastic.

Rose Cushing 35:15

Good idea. Good idea. Because you know, knowledge is power, and the more knowledge that we gain and garner, the better off our life is and the better off the lives of our animals are. And y it's just silly not to take advantage of the free resources that are out there for us to learn.

Rebecca Husted 35:32

Exactly. And all you know, really it is about welfare. It's about welfare of animals, it's also about welfare of people because all of it is inextricably linked. You know, the the owner that's gonna otherwise be very worried and upset if they their animal gets injured. Um it and it could be, you know, the worst part is uh sometimes you were talking about people and how they react on scenes and stuff. And I tell the responders, I say, you know, sometimes that person's really panicking and really upset, you know why? Because they just realized that they're the one that didn't hitch the trailer right, and that's why it came loose. Or they're the one that realizes that it's that realization, oh my God, this thing that I love so much, and I thought I was doing all the right things, and you realize you're the one that caused the wreck, or you're the one that you know threw up the cigarette button that ended up in your trailer, um, or whatever, you know, the things that we do, and we look back and go, Man, if I'd just known, well, you only know what you know. Yeah. But we do talk a lot about prevention because most of these things in in the fire service and in emergency management, have you noticed that even in uh the media, they don't talk about accidents anymore because there's no such thing as an accident. With accident investigation, all this there's there's very, very few acts of God. Acts of God would be something like a deer running in front of your truck.

Speaker 2 36:57

Right.

Rebecca Husted 36:58

There's there's not really but if it's another person in a vehicle and the two of you end up in an incident or a wreck or a collision, it's because somebody did something wrong. Somebody was driving too fast and could have slowed down. Somebody could have had more reflective on the back of their trailer so that somebody could see it. There's always some reason why something happens. And so we now call them crashes and wrecks and incidents. We don't call them accurates anymore.

Rose Cushing 37:28

Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh that's a good point too. And you know, I can tell you from experience, if you lose an animal, you will spend the rest of your life wondering what you could have done better, even if there wasn't anything. But you will you will ask yourself and second guess yourself, what could I have done better or smarter to have prevented that?

Rebecca Husted 37:48

Well, you know, or maybe I should have checked my horses in the middle of the night. You know, could you find them the next morning or whatever, you know, and that is true. Uh, you know, I spend a lot of time. One of the ways that I've gotten really good at what I do is I make these really tough phone calls to people or emails or follow up on on social media with people, and I try to be, you know, it's really hard, um, but I try to be really understanding and empathetic to their situation. But I say, how can we learn from what happened to you? You know, what what really happened versus what I see on you know the photos or what I I hear from the stories. What really happened? Let's tease this apart and and do basically an an an investigation of what happened, and nobody else needs to know the details, but I want to know the details. It's important when I tell these stories of you know how these things happen and we start realizing the causality, um, it usually comes down to the same kinds of things. And so I make those phone calls after a big barnfire, I make those phone calls after a trailer wreck, and many times I'm crying on the phone with a person as we're talking through the situation. Um, but I say, what could we have, you know, what do you think that we could have done that that could have maybe prevented this? And you know, in the beginning they're very defensive usually because we're human and and nobody wants to admit those things. But as we start talking through it, most people in most situations, they start parsing it apart and they start saying, Hey, you know, I could have done this, or I didn't think about it, but I could have gone at this time and and avoided that, or um, I could have made sure, you know, there's a lady up in uh in Canada, she had a barn fire in her place, and she said, You know what, this is not gonna happen again. So when she rebuilt the facility, she has a timer on her electrical system, and when everybody normally leaves the barn at six o'clock in the evening, the the power turns off for the whole barn. And that way she said, You know what, my conscience is clear, I don't have have to worry about it anymore because of course after that fire and she lost forty eight horses.

Speaker 2 40:04

Right.

Rebecca Husted 40:05

Um she couldn't sleep at night. And uh you know, thinking about building another barn and putting more horses in it, it just was terrifying to her. So she came up with that solution. So you know the amazing thing about being humans is we try to learn from other people's pain and suffering and in many cases we can and there are situations that we can learn to mitigate and prevent and um and learn from.

Rose Cushing 40:33

Well you know when we first met you um you put me on the spot when I was doing the TV show with you and you said you know how many horses do you have and can you move them? Do you have a trailer that'll hold them all in emergency? Now before that day I I I scoured those pins and stalls with a fine tooth comb like my baby was going to be in them. I give them their shots. I take super care of them if they look like they need to vet to come to vet came. I mean I was you know just crazy stupid about how careful I was with them but that point had never crossed my mind right and I'm so glad that you said that because I do flood when a hurricane comes occasionally. Luckily it's my house that's in jeopardy and the horses are at the top of the hill but I had never it's me that's in trouble but but I I didn't have an emergency plan for that and that had never crossed my mind that I needed it. So talking with a professional that can just see those things real quick and easy and point them out is is has so much value.

Rebecca Husted 41:36

That's what we try to do. I try to put out a lot of information that you know maybe thinking about you know you're right flooding is a good example that is the most common disaster that happens to people with horses and uh you know it's again it's such a preventable thing. Do you have a high high ground? Yes you watch do you watch Candy Crush or do you do you watch the weather off? Do you check the weather every single day? Do you make sure that you have uh you know whether it's alerts or whatever you gotta have I always encourage people to buy um one of those normal weather radios. I have one right here in my house and I actually had to turn it off so that it wouldn't accidentally go off today because there's solar wind warning because we're getting ready to have some serious wind blow through. And um you know those are the kinds of things that make my life a little bit easier because I know that I have these warnings that will come up and say hey you know we were in a tornado tornado watch uh a couple of weeks ago we had that that really we all had that phone come through too.

Speaker 2 42:38

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 42:38

And uh it was crazy and and right here in Griffin which is about forty five miles from me they had a several people died and uh we drove through there and knocked over trains and took the barn roofs off and of course killed livestock and horses. Um so you know those kind of things it's just terrifying but some of that terror can be mitigated by having a really good plug into an app or website or you do it every single day. You check the weather um and make sure that you've got your animals in a situation where if the weather is gonna go bad or there's a chance of it flooding that you move your animals to high ground and give them some hay and worst case scenario it doesn't flood and you go, ah, the joke's on me. Yeah. But you know in your heart that you can go to sleep at night and not have to worry about waking up the next morning finding horses twenty five miles down the street.

Rose Cushing 43:31

And you know we make the mistake of thinking it can't happen to us. When I filmed my documentary Flood of Tears I interviewed some folks from Whiteville and and they had lived on their property 25 years and never even had mud puddles in their yard to amount to anything. And they're asleep in their second story bedroom and they wake up and it's wet. And that's how bad they flooded that quick that they had no idea it was coming. They lost a lot of their animals and they saved some. But you know you I think we make the mistake of thinking well that can't happen to me. I'm in a 500 year flood flame. I flooded three times since I've lived here hip deep. So you know just because you're not supposed to don't mean it's not coming.

Rebecca Husted 44:14

Exactly and you know between all the changes in climate um and the the things that are occurring with people putting up more and more housing businesses and asphalt every one of those surfaces if you think about the huge square footage just disappears into not being able to take water anymore.

Speaker 2 44:37

Right.

Rebecca Husted 44:38

And so I shunt my water to you and you shunt your your water and my water down to the next guy and eventually what happens is somebody downstream gets a lot more water than they used to.

Speaker 2 44:49

Yes.

Rebecca Husted 44:49

And that's really my father's geographer and you know I learned a lot about flooding. I've done quite a few webinars and talks about flooding and in the geographic side of during of flooding and why those kinds of things happen. And once you start getting into it it's a little bit scary and you start noticing that you know I wonder why they clipped that bridge 40 feet up you know in in Georgia. Right. And then I've got one right here in Northville Georgia that's 53 feet tall. And when I first came here I said hmm so I went to the website and said why the heck is that sucker 53 feet tall? So I went to the website of the stream gauge and started looking at that and guess what? They haven't gotten to 53 feet in the last hundred years but they've gotten up to 47 feet. Right. And there's a reason why that bridge is 53 feet tall. Absolutely and you know the DOT they spend a lot of money on on calculating calculating doing all the surveys and everything else there's a reason for it because they don't want those roads to flood. Every once in a while I see the interstate flood somewhere and I go some engineer somewhere is getting flogged for that one. Oh yeah. For sure. He's beating himself up and thinking damn it I did all these calculations I must have messed up something.

Rose Cushing 46:09

I know my sister lives in Wilmington and during one of the hurricanes they were cut off on all four sides and you couldn't get in. So they were running out of food and water you know in the city so things that didn't happen once before can happen now because the building changes everything.

Rebecca Husted 46:27

Oh yeah so much building um and you know the the the changes in climate. Yes it's proven these atmospheric rivers are holding more water uh the the the storms are holding more water and so that water's got to go somewhere and uh you know sometimes this happens and yeah it comes down to a plan. You know you don't have to be an expert you just have to have a plan. How am I going to get my animals to high ground? And if those animals are cattle and and sheep and goats as well as my horses, you know, where can I put them for a few days or a week and how can I make sure that they get some forage and how can I make sure that I have enough water for all those animals. And when you start doing what I call disaster math, uh it gets a little scary because if you judge 10 gallons of water per day per horse and you've got six horses, that's sixty gallons a day. Now that's assuming that they don't put their foot in it, they don't perp in it, they don't knock it over things, right?

Speaker 2 47:27

Yes.

Rebecca Husted 47:28

And then you take that 60 gallons and you think about I gotta hold them for a week seven you know that it all starts adding up and then you start thinking man that's a lot of buckets I gotta and wait, do I have a generator to run my well wait I don't have a well I have city water what happens if the the mains go out and you know that big freeze we had a couple weeks ago everybody lost their water. You know? Rebecca Rebecca did not lose my water because I have a generator and I have a well and I made sure that everything all the hoses were turned off and drained and did all those things but even that couple days of hot of really cold w weather here in the southeast I watched my friends and they were suffering. And we don't build our houses for that kind of stuff. We don't build our barns for that kind of stuff. Yeah and hydrants froze and well well pumps uh got w overworked and all those kind of things so what can we learn from what's what happened before to make next time better.

Rose Cushing 48:33

One of the smartest things that I've done is buy barrels and cut the top out and then when the weather's looking rough or if it's real dry in the summer or it's cold and I'm worried about mess freezing, I fill all those barrels up with water because they're deep enough they're 50 gallon barrels that you know it won't freeze solid if it does we're in real trouble.

Rebecca Husted 48:53

Exactly.

Rose Cushing 48:54

And then I can dip my buckets out you know they're all up there by my animals. So then I can dip out a bucket of water and fill their thing and that'll hold me for a while, you know it's not like being just whatever's in their trough is all I got.

Rebecca Husted 49:08

You know you think back to people that uh lived before we had electric light and heating and all these kinds of things the way we cook it now. And I don't know how they did animals. I mean it must have been a nightmare to try to keep animals alive.

Rose Cushing 49:24

You know it.

Rebecca Husted 49:26

Well part of it is they didn't put them in barns.

Rose Cushing 49:29

Yeah.

Rebecca Husted 49:30

They tried not to put them in barns. That's true. Because they knew that that shovel and coop and do all those kinds of things was a whole lot of extra work.

Rose Cushing 49:37

So they tried to put them out on the pasture which is what's the irony of that it's always better for their welfare anyway, right? That's for sure, for sure. Let them be horses. That's true. Well I think we've learned a lot of stuff today and I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show. It's always a pleasure to listen to you and learn from you because you have so much knowledge to offer and common sense things that you just don't think about. Like I said I would have sworn that my babies were in padded cells but I didn't have no trailer to haul them out with you know so it's always good to to do that extra check and have that extra set of eyes on things to to tell you things you didn't see.

Rebecca Husted 50:17

Well I always tell people that if they send send me an email or send me something on on PM on Facebook, I will help 'em send me pictures and I you know just don't get butthurt too easy. 'Cause if you ask me my opinion, I'll give you my opinion.

Rose Cushing 50:32

But well, you know, that's good though. I mean, you know, I I I was embarrassed the day you asked me on the TV show, but I was kinda glad it happened when I watched the episode back because my response was what my all my audience's responses would be. Darring you know and there you go. You know, and so it's something you have to think about and look at.

Rebecca Husted 50:53

Well I hope it helps somebody uh prevent their animals from getting getting injured or getting killed and uh anytime I can help you I'm more than willing to we we could talk for hours about all the stories that I've heard over the years and the the goods and the bads but anything you ever need that'll reach out and let me know.

Rose Cushing 51:13

I will and I appreciate it very much. And for all you guys out there listening another good tip is to take a walk around your place every month and just really look at it. Look at your fences has trees fallen down has things changed in the pasture because if you don't walk out there yourself you may not notice it or see it. So I hope that you've garnered some good information to keep your horses safer today and I appreciate you for being on the show so much Rebecca take care of yourself and thank you for having us you too and as always everybody out there thank you for listening I hope you enjoyed today's show our call places even though we might not know each other we walk under the