History of the Project
Emma and Edo met in Fuerteventura in 2017 and by May 2018, they had purchased their first piece of land in Tenerife. This marked the birth of Tenerife Horse Rescue. However, Emma and Edo’s first adventure together was very different to the scruffy farmers you know them as now. They first worked together in a hotel stage show dancing. They used their entertainment and dance backgrounds and did remote work to fund the building on their new land and continually worked hard to develop construction. Edo has described their original dreams as ‘an animal corner where everyone was happy’. Well, that corner continually widens, morphing into the home of hundreds of different animals and volunteers. Their original intentions weren’t to start a charity - However, the needs of the animals on the island kept making themselves clear and now Tenerife Horse Rescue is a registered not-for-profit.
Emma had been around animals her entire life, being named her mum’s favourite goat was only the start of her life dedicated to animals. Her first rescue was Iggy, a shaggy white and grey pup from England. Iggy was the turning point for Emma, when she realised she wouldn’t stop at one. She has had him now for 15 happy, adventure-filled years (october 2022). Edo however was very new to animals when he met Emma, always passionate about them but without the chance to have them in his life. Together their very first rescues were a family of chickens, followed by a paralysed cockerel that needed some TLC and physiotherapy before being able to walk again. Fast forward to now, and there are horses, sheep, goats, donkeys, guinea pigs, rabbits, budgies, cockatiels, chickens, ducks, lizards, dogs, cats and tortoises.
In the beginning it was just Emma, Edo and some family toiling on the land to create basic accommodation. After experiences of some unreliable tradespeople, judgmental locals, competitive “friendly helpers” and many financial failures they looked for help elsewhere. This started with a single volunteer by the name of Thomas from a platform called “work away”. Soon they were joined by three volunteers that all bunked together in a caravan. This was at a time of bare basics, with no electricity, running water or toilets. After realising how passionate volunteers are and how many people share their passion for animals and the environment, Emma and Edo began welcoming more people into their finca family from Work away and those who reach them via other social media channels. Human Resources is one of Emma’s full-time positions here now, with more than 10 volunteer applications coming in everyday across various platforms, which help bring their dream into reality.
Well as of writing in August 2022, developments look like this:
It’s still early days, but with a truly incredible, hardworking and ingenious team of builders/repairers/designers/tradespeople our dreams are coming to life.
Priorities are as follows:
- Extra accommodation for volunteers
- A bigger office space closer to the entrance to welcome volunteers and visitors, and to make room for our ever-growing team (which is almost complete)
- A new communal area that is better situated and with more seats to fit more bums!
- An enclosed area for our ducks and chickens
- A bigger enclosure for sheep and goats
- A Big Track system paddock for the horses
➢Remember! Everything we use to build here is RECYCLED. Which if can’t be used for one thing, can be up-cycled into something else!
Accommodation:We now have what’s been coined as the ‘shanty town’, which consists of five shacks that each house two people. They aren’t luxurious, but they are comfy and shelter us from the elements.
Office: Our current office is technically the living room of our future rental area. It’s also pretty small, and on any one day can have 10 people working in a cramped, human, dog and cat-laden environment. We can’t wait to be able to spread out!
Communal area: With a team of now nearly 50 volunteers, an added communal area will mean less chaos and noise in our sometimes crowded kitchen/chill areas. They also happen to be right next to the homes of 6 volunteers - which isn’t ideal when people need to rest and retire. We love the chaos, but chill time is a must!
Duck and Chicken enclosure: Left to range free, our ducks and chickens actually dominate most of our other small animal spaces and destroy our gardens. They manage to get in and dirty their water or eat their food if we aren’t mindful. They also can breed quite quickly even with our attempts to collect the eggs daily. So with these things in mind, we are going to construct a dedicated home for them, which will mean less clean-up around the other animals and no doubt less water usage all round!
Sheep and goat enclosure: We weren’t expecting to get our 5 sheep, but here we are as a horse sanctuary come zoo! So we have learned to expect the unexpected. However, our sheep are in a temporary home that we had to quickly throw together in order to rescue them. In light of this temporary arrangement, we know they need a little more room to move in a more thought out way. Our goats deserve their own roaming space too!
Track System/ Paddock Paradise
Something we have been dreaming about for a long time, space for our horses to move more naturally. Although this land is not as big as we plan in the future to have a fully functioning track system. It is a great start and we will create a “U” shape system with the water at 1 end of the U and food at the other end ensuring that the horses have to walk back and forth multiple times a day to encourage natural movement for optimum health.
We have some other big plans that are in the pipeline, already in process.
But these come without urgency so we can wait until the other priorities have been completed. Such as the big building will be a VERY large storage area for recycled materials that we collect for building. Currently everything is kept in a big messy pile resembling a scrap yard. We look forward to creating an organised area for our chaos. Secondly we plan to create a mini vet clinic/ lock up in collaboration with a vet to help provide all of the medical care that our animals need.
Anything else we can squeeze in?
We have many more small plans to fill in the gaps such as a “colic corner” for sick horses, A new washing area, more storage spaces, compost toilets, sick bay for larger animals (goats, pigs etc), a food storage area, a food sorting area and as many more sheds as we can fit.
