As food, board, and vet bills become increasingly difficult to justify in hard economic times, many families face the difficult prospect of separating from their horses. And some owners must weigh the grim options of euthanasia, slaughter, or release (often illegal). Horse rescues, like Colorado Horse Rescue (chr.org), are filling up with starving and neglected animals.

Juliana Lehman of Evergreen, Colo. saw these growing needs in the horse community and founded Colorado Horsecare Foodbank (horsefoodbank.org) in 2009, a non-profit organization that helps to keep horses and their owners together. Similar programs have been cropping up around the country, including in Arizona and Oregon.

“I think being a horse person is in your genes. You just love the smell of a barn,” she says. “How does someone tell a child that they can’t keep a horse?”

Lehman holds auctions for fundraising, and she accepts donations in the form of cash, hay, boarding, land, and services, which she forwards to owners in trouble. She also sells planters through the foodbank and hopes to use donated land for growing hay, which would be sold at cost.