Spirit of the Herd is a not-for-profit horse and pony sanctuary based near The Ridgeway holiday park in Alvanley/Frodsham.

We were founded by Val in 1993 when she took on her first rescue Shetland pony named Humbug (who's still going strong out there!). Since then we've expanded to a 24-strong herd, ranging from the ages of five all the way to 28, with all different breeds from miniature Shetlands to Irish Sports Horses as well as our beloved coloured cobs.

We've also expanded our human herd along the way, and we now have a family of dedicated core volunteers, as well as plenty of help and support from volunteering placements, and lovely local businesses and farmers.

Our main work involves rescuing and rehabilitating our horses and ponies who have come from various backgrounds. Some have been abandoned in fields, some beaten, and some have been passed between so many different homes that they will now settle and live out their lives here and can be found happily grazing with our retirement herd.

Each pony's story is different and their rehabilitation involves firstly building trust with people, sympathetically working on any previous issues with them at their own pace, and teaching them everything they need to know in order to become happy and healthy companions to people and each other.

Our mantra is 'Ponies Helping People', and so alongside our rehabilitation of ponies, we also welcome visitors that may have learning difficulties, mental health issues, and other disabilities in order to provide a form of equine therapy, to support and promote human physical and mental health.

Previous to lockdown, we enjoyed hosting students from Petty Pool Vocational College, and it was so rewarding to see students and rescue ponies communicating and learning to trust one another. As horses are so naturally in tune with our emotions and needs, it can be so therapeutic for visitors who come and spend time with our herd.

Day to day you'll find us grooming and exercising our ponies, completing DIY projects (we've built our own stall recently!) and site maintenance, as well as hosting our pony pampers and confidence sessions.

During these, we host people of all ages wanting to come and groom and walk our ponies round an obstacle course, and we'll help teach them about horse care, natural horsemanship and their personal pony for the hour!

Thanks to the easing of lockdown restrictions, we've been able to resume these and other fundraising events.

Recently, we attended the reopening of Castle Park Arts Centre with two of our Shetland ponies, and previous summers we've been generously invited to other fun days, school events and even weddings!

We also post daily updates of what we've been up to, videos and photographs of our herd, any events and ways you can get involved over on our Facebook page as well as profiles of all of our horses and ponies on our website.

If you're interested to know more about us, would like to meet us or if you wish to sponsor a pony or donate you can find us www.spiritoftheherd.co.uk and here.