Update April 9/19 - We raised over $400 with the Purdy's fundraiser. Thank you everyone!

We're doing something new this year -
Welcome to the Bear Valley Rescue Easter Chocolate Fundraiser with Purdy's Chocolatier,  
just in time for Easter!
Two of  the best things you can do, together - eating chocolate and helping horses!!
If you’d like to support us through purchasing some very sweet Easter gifts for
friends, family and yourself, please follow this link: 
https://fundraising.purdys.com/769273-63212

Order deadline date is March 27th.  Orders will be delivered to the Rescue in April.
We hope to  have several locations around Calgary/Sundre for you to pick up your order.
After you’ve signed in at the above link you can buy our amazing chocolates
or invite others to join and support our Fundraising Campaign.

Click here to see Purdy's Easter Chocolate catalogue:
 https://issuu.com/purdyschocolatier/docs/purdys_2019_easter_catalogue

 Below is our newsletter.  You can find the (more legible) pdf version at this link - 2018_review.pdf

The winner of the wine basket raffle is Sharon, from Calgary. Congratulations Sharon, and thank you so much to everyone who helped make our recent raffles such a success!    We raise $1,500 on each of the booze raffles and about $600 on our open house carry-over raffles.  Our bottle drive held in Calgary with the wonderful assistance of The Horse Store and Fairplay Stores raised almost $1,000!   Thank you to the volunteers who gave up their Saturday to do the bottle drive.  All the effort makes such a difference and really helps with our hay, feed, and farrier costs.
Pat, our regular farrier, Denis Gobet, our tipping table farrier, and Julie, our barefoot farrier, were here in October.  We trimmed about 160 horses over the course of 7 days during the month.  Our fall deworming is well underway with about 100 horses dewormed so far and the rest should be done this weekend.  Almost all the horses (and cows) are back from pasture.  I'm really happy with how well trimming, deworming, and hauling have gone.  The horses have been quite well  behaved!  We're sorting the horses at the house for the winter season so that like feedings share space and paddock mates are okay together.  It's always a juggling act as we have to factor in which horses get along, which horses get what type of feed, health issues and treatments, and, if we can, how to make things easier for those of us doing the work!

After a miserable number of weeks that started in mid-September with snow and rain and mud, we've now had wonderful weather which has really helped get everything caught up before winter really settles in.  We are so fortunate to have had a lot of really, really great interns and volunteers staying with us since the start of our program in February.    Most recently, we have Ineke from Belgium and Joyce from Germany staying with us.  Emil and Roman, both from Germany, were an immense help to Mike during their 1-week-that-became-4-weeks stay.  Thank you Vienna for sending them our way!

And the winners are....!
The winners of our raffles are Amber H for the quilt, Jordan F for the kids' activity basket, Linda W for the china mugs, and Boca R for the movie night basket.  We raised over $500 through the raffle!  Laurie M won the bidding on the print, at $175.  Thank you to the prize donors and thank you to everyone who participated!  The wine basket raffle is on until November 1st, be sure to get your tickets!

We have the tipping table farrier here this coming Monday and Tuesday. We'll be deworming at the same time so it will be a couple of busy days for sure. 

We will be saying goodbye to 2 of our international volunteers on Monday.  Emil and Roman, from Germany, have been a huge help and we, especially Mike, will miss them!   They were only planning on staying with us for a week but it stretched out to four weeks, I'm sure because they're having so much fun!  Joyce, also from Germany, and Ineke, from Belgium, are here for another month, and we're really glad for their help as well.   This is a program we started in February and it has been so incredibly successful.  We've formed some wonderful friendships and sharing the workload on a daily basis has had a huge impact.  Our other international guests were Luisa, Marie, and Katja, from Germany, Sandy and Lisa from Australia, and Michelle from New Zealand.  Thank you! I also have to thank our local volunteers who pushed to get this internship program off the ground.  It has been a life-saver!  We don't have anyone lined up yet for after late November, but we've now signed up for the WWOOFER program as well and have had a lot of interest through that.

As everyone is Alberta with horses or livestock knows, the price of hay this year has really gone up (again). With the number of horses in our care, our hay expense has climbed a lot too! Your support would be sincerely appreciated at this time with cash donations to help us cover our hay costs. Any amount helps! So far this fall we've spent over $40,000 on hay. We have another $10,000 we have to pay for, and this will bring our hay stock up to about 3/4 of what we will need for this winter. We thank everyone who has donated either hay or cash to help us get this far, but we do desperately need to raise another $10,000 at least to cover the remainder of the current bills.  We had hoped to raise this amount at our open house but the weather did not cooperate.

You can also help by purchasing tickets on the raffles from our open house that have been extended to Oct 15th/2018. There is a beautiful western print to the highest bidder (current high bid $100), and the 4 items in the raffle: including a family fun night basket, a kids' activity basket, a beautiful handmade quilt, and a set of bone china mugs.
Raffle tickets are only $2 each, and you can specify which item(s) you'd like your tickets entered for.
We also have a wine basket raffle, tickets are $5 each, draw date is Nov 1st.
Tickets for any of these can be purchased by etransfer to bearvalleyab@aol.com or through paypay or even mail - barring a mail strike, or through one of our volunteers who can connect with you.  Bids on the western print can be emailed to bearvalleyab@aol.com.
Thank you so much for your support and caring!

Our open house is happening tomorrow whatever the weather so please drop by!  We will have a 'Square reader' on hand to take transactions with credit cards too.  There will be be coffee, hot chocolate, burgers, a campfire, lots to see and do!

Join us September 22nd for our Open House! 
Please note we cannot accept debit or credit cards.  If you are planning on purchasing or donating, please bring cash or cheque. 

Our google location is:
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Bear+Valley+Rescue/@51.6374242,-114.7073453,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x5376ba6a09b844ad:0xadbcb70f19d57f6d!8m2!3d51.6374209!4d-114.7051566

Our spring on-line auction ran from April 5th to April 14th, 2018.  We have somewhere around 140 items up for grabs! The grand total isn't in yet but we believe it will be over $6,000!!  Thank you so much to all those who donated such fantastic items, and to all the bidders.  A huge shout-out to Mary Ellen L. and Kathy H. for their hard work in collecting all the items, getting them posted, collating the bids and sending everything out to the lucky winners.  A huge undertaking, and we so appreciated it!

Once again we'll have a booth at The Mane Event, located at the Westerner Exposition in Red Deer, from April 27th to 29th.    Our booth location has changed - we'll be at booth 2212.

Join us for a day at the Rescue. Meet some of the animals that call Bear Valley Rescue home, partake of some delicious refreshments, including a BBQ and home-made baking, talk to Mike and Kathy and some of our wonderful volunteers, or just stroll around and enjoy the country air!  More information to follow.  We also hope to have some booths selling items by local crafters, along with our used tack sales.