Friendly Trails has rescued more than 40 horses over the past 25 years in Marin and Sonoma Counties, California. Along with a staff of volunteers, Alane Freund has rehabilitated, retrained, and often rehomed many of our successful herd members.

Most of these highly sensitive horses can’t be successfully placed elsewhere because of their abuse and neglect histories. Friendly Trails originally operated parallel to Alane’s Youth Leadership Program in Woodacre, CA, which provided much of the volunteer labor and funding needed to support the rescue horses while supporting the youth on their path of healing and growth.

Alane has donated endless hours and dollars to this project. The rescue has also survived by placing horses with various families and on various properties in the county and nearby.

One of our horses can be seen grazing with the cattle by the Nicasio Reservoir, in a cattle pasture on San Antonio Road, on a small farm in Boonville, and even one in Oklahoma.

It is our dream to have a large enough property to bring the herd together and allow it to expand.

As the daughter of a horse trainer. Alane grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma. She has developed her own training and horse keeping program based on holistic principles protecting both the animals and the land.

She became known for her skill with the throwaway horses and with dangerous horses. Marin and Sonoma County veterinarian, Dr. Sandy Schuler, has always been a part of the Friendly Trails treatment team and has sometimes identified Marin or Sonoma County horses in dire straits and connected them to Friendly Trails.

Sometimes aspiring horsemen and horsewomen acquire horses for whom they cannot care or whom they discover have physical or behavioral challenges that are outside the scope of capability of a backyard horse owner.

While it is our goal to rehabilitate and rehome as many horses as possible, many of our herd members are unrideable or senior and are thus more likely to spend the rest of their lives with us. It is for this reason that we train all of the herd members to participate in equine assisted learning and psychotherapy, a process that does not involve riding.

Early in our journey we learned that these rescue horses who have experienced trauma, neglect, and/or abuse, were profoundly gifted at walking parallel paths of growth and recovery with the human clients, so they excel at their work which can bring in some income working in collaboration with Heart and Mind Equine.

Friendly Trails Rescue is a fiscally sponsored project of MarinLink, a California nonprofit corporation exempt from federal tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service #20-0879422