The sleepy hollow village of Noordhoek in the deep southern peninsula of the Cape, South Africa. World famous for it's long sandy white beach, surf spots & home to many horse riding & horse lovers.
In recent posts I have given a small idea of my love of nature, animals and only time of anger in life being when animals, women or children are abused. This blog follows on with that with a recent weekend/ sublime Sunday experience I had about three months ago.....
A view of Noordhoek from a wine farm up on the mountain side.
To recap a bit, myself and two older sisters grew up through our single Mom's incredible upbringing, 2 type job sacrifice type back breaking jobs to keep food on the table, put us through decent government schooling when I could have so easily gone wrong in society from outside influences.....(no claim meant to make all think that I am right in my head hehehe.)
Some many lots of moons of tight meals for us but there were always a few fur family rescues of various types in the household and they were given and gave so much on all levels. As a teenager, one of my 3 older female family members passions was horse riding & abuse saving while I was heading into a surfing & ocean loving teenage life although I was part of the horse rescue etc with passion etc in those years already as still today..... as with rescue fur families still the big part of our households that are now spread out from ZA to New Zealand.
Sorry, back to the crux of the story.....a few months ago it was my Mom's 82'nd birthday....what to do for her celebration as opposed to the normal type meal out etc. blah blah normality conforming boringness..... ???
About five years ago I heard of a Mother & daughter team along with some amazing volunteers that were doing amazing work in saving abused horses & rehabilitating them on a farm in the Cape Point area. They were also doing outreach programmes for less fortunate kids & helping/ healing programmes for all ages with the horses helping in this. (Amazing documentation is scientifully scribed around the world of how much animals help in these ways.)
A few months ago a friend of mine told me about a similar sounding setup in the beautiful Noordhoek valley where she lives. It turned out that it is was the same setup that had now moved to Noordhoek.
Bang!.....we decided to take my Mom to the Tom Ro Haven for Equines and Children.
Plans were made with them and the date set. (They welcome visits, help, donations etc but I just felt it better to organise first as certain times like feeding times etc are hectic and I personally wouldn't want to have to entertain people while carrying out these tasks.)
Within a few minutes of interaction with the horses and chatting to the owner, my elderly Mom was beaming more than I have seen in years. This was probably her first return to that type of horse world in about 30 years and it turned out that her and the owner had been in the same horse circles all those years ago & spent a couple of hours reminiscing about those times and mutual acquaintances from from those years. Bang!!!!! .....best birthday she has had in decades thanks to the unconditional love & giving from animals :)
For some further explanation......they are a NPO (non profit organization) which means they get no Government funding and are not sponsored by any large corporations etc. The Mom, daughter & amazing volunteers do the feeding, caring etc etc etc through all hours of the day & night and weather conditions out of pure love for the animals on a daily whim & prayer that public donations will come in to cover the huge costs of feed, vets, trucking, vehicle, blankets & tack etc etc etc. My kind of human heroes helping sadly scorned "fur" heroes that do so much unconditionally for people on many levels.
"OUR HISTORY
Established in 2012, Tom Ro Haven is a registered NPO which rescues abused and neglected horses and ponies and rehabilitates them at their premises in Noordhoek, Cape Town. The horses and ponies at the Haven are then used in equine assisted healing programmes, focusing on children and young adults deemed to be at risk, or who have suffered from physical or emotional trauma. By using horses to heal and awaken empathy, compassion and respect, the Haven aims to not only change the lives of horses, but to positively impact the local community too."
The above exert is taken from Tom Ro's web page which can be viewed at https://www.tomrohaven.co.za/
They also have a facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1405378303007247
If you have a few dollars to spare then this is a beyond deserving organisation to donate to.....every cent and volunteer helping hand is beyond appreciated.
It made my year being with these beautiful animals & people and most so in seeing the joy in my Mom's special day.
Hope you enjoyed my experience and thnks to 
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All of the photos used were taken by myself.