Retired and rescued: Old horses live out their final years at River Thunder Ranch

Michele Sleighel gave Pinto a fond smile as the horse dipped its head for a nuzzle. The 30-year-old retired therapy horse probably missed the children that used to pet him, she said.

As Sleighel continued to talk, Pinto attempted to reroute her back to the truck bed full of hay he was eating earlier. Here at River Thunder Ranch, these retired horses are allowed to be brats, she joked.

Pinto is one of several horses on the ranch, which serves as a sanctuary for unwanted, neglected and retired horses to live out their twilight years.

“The horse rescue just started growing on accident,” Sleighel said last week. “The need is so real.”

When Sleighel moved back to El Paso in 2022, the original intention for purchasing land was for her horse, Thunder. He was her first horse – a stocky, chestnut-haired quarter horse that had been abandoned in a stable outside Los Angeles where she volunteered.

Thunder’s hindquarters squirmed, a condition other riders dismissed as a neurological problem until Sleighel discovered it was worms and dewormed him. He was a stubborn senior who gave her an excited, “old man, cough-y holler” when she visited. He couldn’t grow a mane, just a copper-colored puff on his head. Sleighel rode him with patience in the arena until an equestrian informed her the horse had tossed every rider before her.

But Sleighel loved him all the same and she moved him to his new home in 2023, a two-acre ranch she purchased just outside El Paso in Anthony, New Mexico.

Thunder wasn’t alone for long.

River, a smoky-colored grullo that Sleighel found off Craigslist, joined him. His owner, a cowboy in Anthony, advertised the horse as easy to ride. That’s what Sleighel wanted, a horse she could ride, ideally without the trauma of neglect like Thunder had. But she took one look at the arthritic horse – the tumor protruding from his chest, his swollen knees as his owner exhausted him on a hard ride – and she overpaid $2,000 just to get him out of there.

Soon, people started contacting her about horses they couldn’t care for anymore, as well as dogs and turtles.

“I’m pretty Christian and I feel like it’s my job to serve my community,” Sleighel said. “Someone just left chickens on my property the other day.”

Once a horse is injured or becomes too old to work, owners refer to it as “on their feed bill,” Sleighel said. That means owners are spending money just to feed them, but are less inclined to invest in their lives, she said.

Sleighel has rescued retired horses from a therapy ranch in Canutillo. She has rescued spunky Shetland ponies from Vinton that once gave children rides at birthday parties. Recently, she rescued a “25-year-old, super old, black lady horse” whose owner could no longer afford her.

By March of this year, Sleighel had lost her lucrative job working remotely for a San Francisco tech company. She used her time unemployed to “hit the gas” on River Thunder Ranch, starting the formal process to form a tax-exempt organization.

“People kept coming by asking if I was a nonprofit, but I was just a girl who keeps finding horses,” she said.

The nature of Sleighel’s rescue, where most horses are living the end of their lives, means residents come and go. Thunder, whom the ranch is named after, lived for less than a year after the move. River, the ranch’s other namesake, was euthanized this month after struggling with pain from tumors and advanced arthritis.

The youngest residents are horses Sleighel purchased from a kill pen, destined to be shipped to and slaughtered in Mexico for the international horse meat trade. A young horse has the potential to be broken in and rehomed, she said.

Volunteers trickled in on a recent morning, ready to haul hay and spray fly repellant. The first to arrive were Tony Arreola and his girlfriend, Jasmin Gomez, who commuted from far East El Paso.

Arreola had an internship in Guthrie, a small ranching community in northwest Texas, before moving back to El Paso. He and Gomez hope to one day own their own ranch.

“I would say I’m like a first-generation cowboy,” Arreola said. “My family in Mexico, they had ranches and stuff, but I was too young to actually be there. Now I think, coming back into that world and that lifestyle was like an itch you can’t get rid of.”

Gomez said she started falling in love with horses through volunteering.

“I think it just helps me center myself a little,” she said. “Like the calmness that it brings me is what keeps me here.”

Elizabeth Zelenak, another volunteer, echoed a similar sentiment. She grew up in Canutillo and other than the occasional trail ride, is new to horses.

“I tend to be an anxious person and I found that horses, if you’ve read anything about them, they pick up on your heart rate, and they kind of force you to calm down and regulate,” she said.

The horses are typically separated in different sections based on age, temperament and medical needs. Noche, a blind horse who acts like the head of the herd, doesn’t usually share a space with the miniature horses, Estrella and Blackie, who are short enough to get stepped on, but that morning the rain had flooded their pen.

The volunteers that day were also prepping the space for farm day, a monthly event where the public is invited to pet and read to the horses. Children can ride miniature horses, a band performs and vendors sell food and flowers. September’s farm day also featured a south bath and games hosted by students from the University of Texas at El Paso. Admission is free, though visitors can make a suggested $5 donation.

In addition to donations, River Thunder Ranch generates funding through an online shop and Airbnb.

Sleighel, who’s 38, said she didn’t become passionate about horses until she was an adult. She grew up in the Parkland Mobile Home Park in Northeast El Paso, and her only experience with horses was occasionally riding her uncle’s horse in Red Sands when she was a child.

Then, during the pandemic, she began volunteering at a stable in Montebello, east of Los Angeles. People who leased there taught her how to saddle and ride in exchange for her cleaning their stalls and walking their horses.

“I was super green, but really determined,” Sleighel said. “I never encountered anything I wanted that bad. You think at that age you’ve discovered all your passions, but horses, I never loved anything like this. I was up at 6 a.m. in L.A. traffic driving out there.”

Sleighel said the farm days are a way to give people access to the joy of horses. The horse world can be expensive and full of gatekeeping, sometimes borderline hazing, she said. Volunteers have told her that at other ranches, they’re expected to pick up manure for two years before they can even touch a saddle.

But at River Thunder Ranch, people can come without making a major financial commitment, she said. Eventually she would like to open up a garden and permanent public space for the community.

Sleighel said people’s generosity has restored her faith in humanity as she experiences people from the El Paso area checking in on her and the horses, contributing their time and resources.

“I’ve had some horses come so emaciated, I thought they came to me just to die,” Sleighel said. “But through donations, vets calling me, people donating bags of grain, we’re able to bring horses back. You would not believe it. Even from the kill pen, when they come wild as hell, a year later they’re begging you for scratches. Meet these horses now you saw a year ago, and it would shock you.”

This story was originally published by El Paso Matters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.