In its early days, we called the beginnings of our sanctuary ‘The Golden Oldies’.

Then “Flicka” came along… Flicka was a small strawberry roan pony, rescued after being found abandoned in the middle of an industrial estate amongst high-rise buildings and billowing smoke. Flicka was delightful – he loved people, was very affectionate and adored fuss and attention despite his terrible start in life. Sadly, he developed liver cancer after several years of teaching young children to ride and was retired to peaceful convalescence. After six happy months, Flicka’s cancer sadly took him from us. He will never be forgotten…

Flicka’s rescue story highlighted the problems faced by many equines that become unwell or too old to work and are then simply unwanted or abandoned… so the Flicka Foundation was born and Flicka’s legacy very much lives on through the work we do today rescuing donkeys from situations of abuse, neglect and abandonment.

All animals deserve a chance – whilst there is so much cruelty in this world to people as well as animals the reality is that it’s possible to care about more than one issue at a time. We mustn’t assume that a capacity for compassion is dependent on mutual exclusivity.