"...so that all horses and ponies may lead a
full and productive life, free from pain and abuse."

At the onset of 1984, Staci Wilson and I founded an equine beneficence organization named HorseAid™ - funded entirely by the two of us, HorseAid™ did not solicit funds.

That was quite a novel approach to horse rescue at the time, and HorseAid™ still remains as the only 100% privately funded org of its type, reach, and scope that has ever existed.

See this Web site for a fully independent take on what it was really like to be in equine rescue/welfare in the 80's and 90's - not fun!

HorseAid™ was the first to do in-depth and on-site investigations into the PMU farm's wide-spread horse abuses, and the resulting vast horse slaughter industry it spawned.

More significantly, we were the first to raise the alarm about the many health risks linked to women using HRT medications, which are all derived from Pregnant Mares Urine (PMU).

We published the results of those findings (with photos), in our 1986 Fall/Winter issue of Equine Times News (forerunner of Running Free) under the headline: "The Pill That Kills".

HorseAid's™ equine abuse investigations and PMU/Premarin® exposé's were a featured story on many national and local TV News shows. We also received many commendations.

By 1999, the HorseAid™ program was costing Staci and I about $500K a year, and had now grown to over 20 chapters world-wide, and 13,000 full and part time volunteers.

If you were to factor in our HorseAid™ volunteers' unbilled time and out of pocket expenses, the HorseAid™ program would have cost us about $10M - $12M a year.

In short, HorseAid™ could not have been so accomplished, so successful, without our extensive and extremely dedicated world-wide volunteer network.

In 2000, I returned full time to my motion picture career, partly because it was time to do so, and partly because HorseAid™ had become too costly for Staci and I to keep funding.

We had both made innumerable personal and professional sacrifices in order to successfully meet all the program's many objectives and goals.

In July of 2002, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) substantiated HorseAid's™ 1986/87 findings about the many health risks associated with using Premarin® / Prempro® medications, stating that: HRT appeared to increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer as well as heart disease, blood clots and stroke. We were finally vindicated!

HorseAid™ was certainly a bumpy ride for Staci and I, but one well worth taking.

Along the way, we were to face the entire corporate might of the world's largest pharmaceutical company, become involved in many legal actions, and even had cases we were involved in heard before the highest court of several states (we prevailed in all).

Our original intent in founding HorseAid™ was to just save a few horses here and there, and educate people about equine abuse and proper horse care.

We ended up by rescuing more horses and ponies than any other organization ever has before or since (including the largest rescue ever in U.S. history), revising laws, righting wrongs in the equine world, and by exposing the severe and often fatal risks associated with using HT medications, protecting the health and well-being of women the world over.

Unknown to us at the time, this one act of charity, may well have saved Staci's own life.