Emergency Veterinary Reserve
The Rapha Fund
A dedicated reserve so that a decision about a horse’s care is a medical question and not a financial one. Named for the first foal born at Tree of Life Hollow.
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$2,650 Baseline Wellness care for every horse, by February 2027 |
$12,500 Reserve One major surgery, held ready |
$15,150 Fully funded What the fund is built to hold |
Why the fund exists
RaphaRapha was the first foal born at Tree of Life Hollow — a colt out of Etta, by Chief Blue Streak. He was all white. We named him for Jehovah-Rapha, the God who heals. He was born with neonatal encephalopathy. Before long, he went septic. And sadly, he was humanely euthanized before the end of his first day. We want to be straight about something, because the argument on this page does not need us to be otherwise: no amount of money would have saved him. There was no procedure to buy, no specialist to call, no reserve that would have changed how that day ended. What his death did was show us how unprepared we were for the emergency that had not happened yet. We had a breeding program, a mortgage, a hay bill, and no answer to the question of what we would do if something catastrophic and treatable came through the gate. It also sent us looking for causes. We tested the entire herd for Lethal White Overo, and the results reorganized the breeding program: two of our foundation stock are carriers, one mare was placed with another family rather than kept in our breeding program, and Etta was bred to our only non-overo stud. We had followed the conventional guidance about not breeding frame overo to frame overo. But the conventional guidance is incomplete, because as we’ve learned carriers do not always show the pattern. You cannot see LWO. You have to test for it. |
The principle
A horse’s care should never come down to what is in the account that week. 
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Manny, at Sixteen
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Windrider’s Hatak Hullo — Manny — is HOA #1909, one of two horses in our program to earn Corazón de Caballos, and Tim’s mount for five seasons with the James River Hunt. Earlier this year he fractured his left hind leg. Surgery, then months of rehabilitation. He turned sixteen in the middle of it. Here is the part that matters for this page. A hind-limb fracture in a sixteen-year-old horse is the kind of injury that gets a particular word attached to it — catastrophic — and that word is not always a medical judgment. Sometimes it is an accounting one. The same injury, in the same horse, with the same prognosis, ends differently depending on what the owner can put on the table that week. That is the truth of it, and nobody in horses will tell you otherwise. We pulled out every stop. It was an unplanned five-figure detour and it drained our savings to do it. We would do it again, and we should not have had to do it that way. Our veterinarians believe he has made a full recovery. He is putting condition back on, getting stronger week over week, and making it fairly clear that he would like to go back to work. |
A few weeks before he was hurt, I thought I’d had my last ride on him. I didn’t know it at the time — that’s the thing about last rides. Now he’s stronger every day, and every day he’s waiting for me to get back on. T.P. Shoemaker |
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The Arithmetic
There is no abstraction in this. Every horse here is on our veterinarian’s annual wellness plan — vaccines, Coggins, routine care — and that plan has a price.
| Annual wellness plan, per horse | $265 |
| Horses currently in our care | 10 |
| Baseline to raise before February 2027 | $2,650 |
| Emergency reserve — sized to one major surgery and rehabilitation | $12,500 |
| The Rapha Fund, fully funded | $15,150 |
Ten gifts of $265 clears the baseline. That is the whole of it. Ten people, one horse each, and every animal on this farm is current on its wellness care through the year.
Why a reserve, and why that number
The reserve figure is not a round number chosen because it sounded serious. It is roughly what Manny’s fracture cost to treat, start to finish. We sized the reserve to carry one major surgery and the rehabilitation that follows it, without help and without hesitation.
A funded reserve means bills get paid as they arrive. It also means something we care about a good deal: that we will never have to run an emergency appeal while a horse is on a table. You have seen those campaigns. Everyone in horses has. They are slower than the animal needs, they put a family’s worst week on public display, and they work about as often as they don’t. The reserve is the reason you will not get that email from us.
Every dollar above the baseline goes to the reserve and stays there. It is not spent down at the end of the year. When we draw on it, rebuilding it becomes the next year’s work — and we will review the target annually, because a living herd changes size and a figure that was right in 2026 may not be right in 2029.
Ways to Give
Every amount below is denominated in care rather than in recognition.
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One horse, one year
$265 Covers the full annual wellness plan for one horse — vaccines, Coggins, routine care. Ten of these and the baseline is met. |
Monthly
$22/mo One horse’s year, spread across twelve months. Recurring gifts are what turn a reserve from a goal into a standing condition. |
Any amount
You choose Smaller gifts add up quickly against a goal this size. Larger gifts go straight to the reserve, where they sit ready. |
We do not sell the naming of a horse.
Plenty of good organizations offer naming as a giving tier, and we understand why. We won’t. A name here comes out of the bloodline, the language, and the circumstances of the horse’s arrival — Fichik Okchako, Chahta Otka Homma, Isuba Luak. Those are not decorations. They are the first thing we get to say about an animal, and they are not for auction.
What a gift to the Rapha Fund supports is care. Not naming, not access, not a say in breeding decisions. Care.
What you will hear back
The February ReportEvery February we publish where the fund stands. What it covered in the preceding year. Which horses are current on their wellness plan, by name. What the reserve holds. Whether we drew on it, and for what. If the herd grew and the baseline moved, we will say so and show the new figure. If we missed the goal, we will say that too. Anyone who gives to this fund should be able to check our work. That is the entire reason the report exists. |
The Organization
Tree of Life Hollow is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Gifts designated to the Rapha Fund are restricted to veterinary care for the horses in our program and are tracked separately from general operating funds. EIN 41-4463357 |
There was nothing we could buy for Rapha. There was something we could buy for Manny, and it nearly took everything we had. This fund exists so that the next time, it is the veterinarian who decides.
Give to the Rapha Fund