ABOUT OUR SANCTUARY
Shawnee Trail Wild Mustang Sanctuary, formerly Horses Lives Matter Equine Sanctuary, is a Non Profit  501c3.  We give Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rounded up wild horses a place to be as free as possible. We maintain a small herd of Branded Mustang. Our goal is to save as many senor branded mustangs from the BLM as our acreage allows. These horses deserve freedom. Our Sanctuary gives them as much as possible. It is our faith in God that to protect his beautiful creatures and a wild beautiful Mustang named Cookie that created this organization. We thank him for his blessings every day.

Sanctuaries are forever homes for rounded up wild Mustangs. They live free on our land. A Sanctuary takes full responsibility for all these horses needs. Rescues are amazing the only way they differ from Sanctuaries is they receive adoption fees when they find an acceptable home for a rescue. as a Sanctuary we take on the care for the rest of their lives. We are not discrediting the amazing work rescues do. Without them many many horses would die. It is a huge challenge to find suitable homes for horses. We commend them and all they do.
 
Our biggest challenge is keeping up with the hay prices. Due to severe weather, floods and droughts all over the country hay costs remain steep.


OUR LOCAL COMMUNITY
Our local horse community is our priority. We understand the costs involved in owning a horse. Everybody goes through a rough patch sometimes so we do our best with feed and other needs to help. Keeping horses in their homes in extremely important to us.

EDUCATION
We educate the public on the plans of our elected officials in Washington DC for our wild horses. They want to allow Cattle Ranchers and Private Oil Companies to profit off the land that belongs to the horses, wildlife and you, a United States Citizen. In order to do this they want to euthanize close to 70,000 Wild Horses. Please contact your elected officials both U.S. Representative and U.S. Senators and tell them to stop this plan. Save our horses and wildlife.

BACKYARD BREEDING
We strive to also explain the harm to the horses in backyard breeding. Horses are very expensive. If you do not plan on keeping or have a plan for a foal don't breed. This will help put a stop to horse slaughter. Studs should be secure so there are no surprises. Texas is, generally speaking, still an open range state, considered an Open Range That is- may still roam at large in Texas with two exceptions:

THE RIGHT TO HORSES ROAMING IN TEXAS
Public highways.  The Texas Agriculture Code states "[a] person who owns or has responsibility for the control of a horse, mule, donkey, cow, bull, steer, hog, sheep, or goat may not knowingly permit the animal to traverse or roam at large, unattended, on the right-of-way of a highway." Tex. Agric. Code § 143.102 (Vernon 2004)(emphasis added). The statute defines a "highway" as "a U.S. highway or a state highway in this state, but does not include a numbered farm-to-market road." Id. at § 143.101. Therefore, U.S. and state highways in Texas are effectively considered closed ranged. Conversely, the 40,000-plus miles of farm-to-market roads in Texas are unaffected by this statute.
Stock Law Counties or Areas.  Chapter 143 of the Agriculture Code permits local elections to adopt a law (a.k.a. "stock law"), where a person may not permit any animal of the class mentioned in the proclamation to run at large in the county or area in which the election was held. A typical stock law will prohibit horses, mules, donkeys, sheep, goats, and cattle from running at large.
As expressly provided by the Code, some counties in Texas have enacted county wide stock laws, yet others have chosen to elect stock laws only in certain precincts or areas within said county. Unfortunately, there is no statewide index that traces the counties or areas where stock laws have been passed

As of 2011 these counties are considered open range:

Andrews, Callahan, Camp, Childress, Collin, Cottle, Ector, Hemphill, Jeff Davis, Kennedy, King, La Salle, Loving, Midland, Navarro, Oldham, Palo Pinto, Reagan, Schleicher, Shackleford, Stephens, Sterling, and Throckmorton (updating regularly)

Everyone should do their part to stop horse slaughter by securing your stallion regardless of your county laws.

God took a handful of southern wind, blew his breath
upon it, and created the horse. ~Bedouin Legend

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