Families are under evacuation orders ahead of Hurricane Florence, and that means taking their pets, too. But when your pet is a horse, things get a bit more difficult.
WSB-TV's Wendy Corona met with a woman who is stepping in to make it easier.
"If someone had two horses and brought them, they could go here," GoHorse.com co-creator Jenny Fudge said as she showed WSB-TV the paddocks where she could take in horses that needed to get out of the path of Hurricane Florence.
“The travel situation is complicated, and the sooner they can get out, the better,” Fudge said.
Imagine moving a 1,000-pound horse into a 6-foot by 7-foot trailer, only half of which isn't even an arm’s length wide. That becomes a stressful situation for an animal not used to traveling.
Then throw in the traffic and the heat of the road, and it becomes stressful for the owner as well as the animal.
From that was born GoHorse.com, a site that lists stables along the East Coast, now with a special filter listing where hurricane evacuees are welcome.
“You just go on there and type the city you're looking for, and it will bring up a bunch of stables,” Fudge said.
The goal: less stress for a horse confined in a trailer and dealing with a possibly dangerous situation.
“They can stop drinking, which can later lead to colic, which can potentially lead to death,” Fudge said.
Through the website, horse owners who need to evacuate can better plan their escape and get their horses back to their natural environment.
If you have a pasture or stable space, you can also add it to GoHorse.com. It's easy to use and already seeing double its normal traffic due to Hurricane Florence.
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