Rescued Lennox donkeys happy in their new home

It was a sad day for many people in Lennox Head when the iconic donkeys had to leave their hilly home of many years on the old Condon farm, but they have well and truly landed on their hooves at Coopers Shoot, thanks to Lisa Willey from Free Rein Horsemanship.

The Echo covered the first part of this story in August. This week we went along to see how the inseparable donkeys (mother and daughter) are going, and also met some of the horses Lisa has rescued.

She explained that since the donkeys’ owner passed away many years ago, they had been monitored by community members from a distance, but it wasn’t until they came into care that issues with their hooves, teeth and worm load could be sorted out.

Her first priority was to fix their laminitis, which can seriously damage the feet of horses and donkeys and is now being treated.

‘Still, they’re super-resilient!’ said Lisa. ‘They’ve just had their teeth done, and the dentist said they’re both probably over thirty years old. They can live up to fifty, apparently.’

Donkey rescue

Although she normally rescues horses, Lisa says she got involved after Nikki Tester posted about the donkeys’ plight on the Lennox community page.

‘I said, if no one else can take them, then I’m happy to take them and rehabilitate them, because I’ve got the rescue here.’

She says that after a good worming and attention to their hooves, the donkeys are now ‘pretty well on track’ and getting on well with her horses. They are certainly looking very happy with their new hilltop view, happily sharing a bowl of food.

Lisa said she wanted to thank people for helping her out with the costs, with the online fundraiser still open for anyone wanting to assist the donkeys and her other rescues.

She says she loves having the donkeys around, and is happy they were able to stay together. ‘Yeah they’re two peas in a pod. The daughter is Freya and her mum was Mama, but we changed it to Gaia. They’ll be rehabilitated here. Once their hooves are all better they will be able to be rehomed together.

‘At first they were quite standoffish too, but now they’ll come up to you. They’re quite happy to get pats. They’re better at being haltered now, and more interested in people. We did some target training and things like that with my class, which was pretty cool.’

Could you tell us about your other rescue work?

‘Yes, I’ve been rescuing horses for about six years. Before that, I started training horses from scratch, and discovered there are a lot of horses that get sent to kill pens.

‘There’s hundreds every month, and the only thing that’s “wrong” with them, most of the time, is that they’re just not trained yet, so they’re mass-bred and then just sent to these pens.

‘There’s some rescue places that go and get them. Very rarely, they’ll get bought by private people, but obviously, people don’t want to have essentially a wild horse,’ Lisa explained.

‘So I started getting them and training them and just teaching them to be handled; teaching them to have all the basic care done, like picking up hooves, float-loading, getting rugged and unrugged and brushed and all of that.

‘If they’re old enough, I’ll teach them to be ridden, because then they’re more likely to get a home, they’ve got a broader range of people that are interested. So I just kept doing that.

‘Whenever I’ve got the space, and even sometimes when I don’t, I end up with some rescues.’

Saved from slaughter

With 80 acres in the rolling hills of Coopers Shoot, Lisa Willey rescues horses from as far afield as Queensland.

‘The last one I went to was in Gympie, and that was the biggest one I’ve been to yet. There were about 70 or 80 horses in the kill pens. The dog meat buyers will go there and set a meat price and we have to outbid them.’

She said colts and stallions are the hardest to rescue, because they haven’t been gelded, but for her, ‘it’s just whoever goes through first. I don’t mind what they are. Sometimes they’re old, and they’re quiet, lovely, handled horses, but the owners don’t want to pay for feed anymore, or whatever it is.

‘But the majority of them are just unhandled, and they’re young and healthy. There’s nothing wrong with them. They just haven’t been trained.’

So far Lisa has rescued over 40 horses, with the costs subsidised by her riding classes and training work.

How did you first get interested in horses?

‘Well, my mum used to ride when she was young, and then, when I was about 11, her sister bought a horse, and that got that ball rolling, much to my joy as an 11 year old girl.

‘So mum bought Roxy, who was just my best friend and taught me everything. She taught me how to build a real partnership, listen to her and work together. And now to this day, all of my training is centred on connection-based horsemanship – I learned it all from her.

‘It’s not about making them be submissive and do what we tell them to. Like teaching kids, you give them the motivation to learn, you don’t force them to learn. She taught me all about Liberty before I ever knew what that was; doing things without ropes or halters.

‘And then years later, I bought my horse Atlas when I was about 20 years old. By that point, I was pretty experienced, but he was very young, so I got a lot more experience training him.

‘After that I was just training other people’s horses on and off for years, I never really thought of doing it as a job. I was actually going to be a bird trainer, that was my plan!’

Your approach sounds very different to traditional horse breaking? ‘Yes there’s a lot of different ways to get to the same outcome in a kind way, it really just depends on the individual horse.

‘I use positive reinforcement training. At the start, when they’re unhandled, it’s always about removing pressure, never applying it… you get a lot of trust that way.

‘Mostly I do my own classes with my herd. So the students come and they interact in my herd, and then I do do private lessons for people with their own horses sometimes.’

Always more to learn

‘It’s very easy these days to learn more,’ said Lisa. ‘Back in the day, if a trainer said you have to be rough with them or you have to be dominant, you didn’t have anything else to tell you otherwise. You’d think, maybe that’s what has to be done. Now, because of the internet, the information is everywhere.

‘I implore people to look into other ways of doing things, if it doesn’t feel right. In maybe twenty years, I don’t think there’ll be any of that traditional rough style training left. It will be very rare, in the same way that it is now with dogs. Back in the day, you’d have choker chains to make the dog sit or whatever, whereas now you use positive reinforcement, and that’s everywhere.

‘Of course it’s a skill that you need to develop, but once you’ve got the skill, it opens the doorway to everything. I’ll preach to the end of the Earth how good positive reinforcement is, and it’s never not worked in my experience; pushy horses, aggressive horses, it doesn’t matter.

‘If your methods rely on the foundation of trust and connection, then you’re going to succeed,’ she said. ‘Roxy showed me what’s possible with horses; not to listen to what people are saying, but to listen to what the horse is saying. I think that’s the key.’

How to help

Like the rest of the Northern Rivers, conditions at Coopers Shoot have gone from very wet to very dry in recent months, with Lisa Willey currently going through a huge amount of feed to keep her horses and donkeys going.

You can help her help the animals here.

Lisa says that if anybody has the space, there are ‘so many’ horses that need saving from the kill pens, along with many other animals needing intervention to avoid the slaughterhouse.

She urges people who are looking for a horse to consider a rescue, instead of buying privately. Lisa also sells rescue horses that she’s trained to new owners in order to fund more rescues.

She wanted to pay tribute to her ‘amazing friends’ John and Claire who opened up their home to her, and let the rescue animals live on their beautiful property.

You can find out more about the horses and donkeys and see videos about Lisa Willey’s training techniques at the Free Rein Horsemanship website or via her Facebook page.