El Camino Ranch Boot Campers Help Retired Therapy Horses Find New Hope!
This past weekend El Camino
Ranch Boot Campers were proud to say they participated in their second year at the America's Family Pet Expo. They helped Camp Rusk Foundation raise donations and spread awareness about retired horses!
As a program that focuses on the development of our Boot Campers, this was an excellent opportunity for the girls to learn money management, public speaking skills, the importance of philanthropy, and put the skills they learned at the barn to practice in a real world setting.
But the Boot Campers weren't the only El Camino Ranch faces that showed up to the expo! Resident horse Tonto the arabian gelding made his public debut along with his pal Cristalano the thoroughbred. The two of them worked together as animal ambassadors for the Camp Rusk Foundation!
Tonto is a retired lesson program horse, and Cristalano is a retired race horse from Los Alamitos race track. Over the three day trip they worked along side Boot Campers to take pictures, do interviews, and raise donations to help the retired horses of the Camp Rusk Foundation!
During their three day trip these girl set out to meet a goal of raising $1500 for the weekend. Not only did they meet their goal with their charismatic smiles, and knowledge of the equine- THEY EXCEEDED IT! All together, they raised $1800 to help the horses at the Camp Rusk Foundation. They also inspired Camp Rusk's newest sponsor April Bryson to make a one acre endowment for the retired horses!
As a show of gratitude for their hard work, Camp Rusk Foundation founder Jon took all the volunteers to dinner were the girls each enjoyed a steak dinner and ice cream brownie before heading home. As a surprise he also gifted each Boot Camper with her own surprise horse back riding lesson at the El Camino Ranch Riding Academy!
El Camino Ranch is proud of the hard work, determination, compassion, and work ethic of all our Boot Campers who participated this weekend. We'd also like to thank the Camp Rusk Foundation for hosting us two years in a row.
Check out some more pictures from the trip here!
