At Easy Horse Care Rescue Centre, our mission is to rescue and rehabilitate abused, neglected and abandoned horses, ponies and donkeys, while campaigning for the better treatment of animals across Spain. We are a no-kill foundation and provide each rescued animal with a safe and loving sanctuary – either here at our centre or via rehoming – for the rest of their lives.

It all began with a stallion locked in a filthy stable. We moved to Spain from England in 2001, aiming to slip into an easy sunshine-and-relaxation retirement. But all that changed in 2008 with Luceiro, a two-year-old stallion we found locked in a filthy and dark stable, his left eye badly injured and rotting, hurling himself repeatedly against the bars of his stall as flies drove him crazy.

Unable to walk away from such a distressing case of animal cruelty, we brought Luceiro home to our own finca – and unwittingly created a much-needed horse rescue centre. We set up our Easy Horse Care Rescue Centre near the little town of Rojales in the province of Alicante, along Spain’s Mediterranean coastline. We now care for more than 120 horses, ponies and donkeys saved from abuse and neglect, plus a menagerie of other rescued animals, including dogs, cats, parrots, chickens, geese, peacocks and pigs.

Our rescue centre has attracted significant media attention both in Spain and abroad, particularly after our daring and difficult rescue of Faith the Pony, which pushed animal welfare into the public spotlight. Faith became the first pony in Spain to be fitted with a prosthetic leg after her mutilated front leg had to be amputated. In 2014, American publication Narratively ran a feature-length story on the rescue, entitled Saving an Amputee Pony Named Faith.

Faith’s journey inspired Sue to write a series of children’s books telling the stories of our rescued horses, aiming to raise awareness about animal abuse while generating additional funds to cover the centre’s hefty running costs. The first children’s book, Faith: Diary of a Heroic Horse, is now available via our free monthly open day.