Caballus
Operations for a horse rescue: the daily care of horses, and the coordination of the volunteers who deliver it.
It is built for a volunteer working a shift in a barn, on a phone, outdoors, on poor signal.
What it is
Caballus holds a rescue’s horses and its shift roster in one place: each horse’s record and feeding, the checklist a shift works through, who was there and for how long, and the reports a volunteer raises when something needs an officer’s attention.
It is run by Rob Heckart, and it is used by one horse rescue in Maryland.
You cannot sign yourself up
There is no public sign-up, and there never has been. A Volunteer Coordinator at the rescue creates your record from your name, your email address and — if you give one — your mobile number, and that is the moment you are asked whether Caballus may text you. Your answer is recorded against your record with the date you gave it.
These are the words you are read, and you answer yes or no to them:
Caballus will text you when a shift you could work is short, or when there is rescue news that will not keep. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop and HELP for help. Your sign-in codes are separate, and STOP never stops those.
Nothing is agreed on your behalf: the box beside those words starts empty, a coordinator ticks it only if you say yes, and a no is recorded as readily as a yes. What we do with your number is the privacy policy, and the rest of it is the terms.
You then sign in with a six-digit code sent to you. Nobody without a record can get in.
What we send by text
Two things, and nothing else, ever:
- A shift you could work is short of people — so that somebody who is free can pick it up.
- Rescue news that will not keep until you next open the app.
Everything else the app has to say — the daily staffing summary, reports raised on a shift, and your sign-in code — goes by email. A real emergency is a phone call, and this is not one.
Message frequency varies and is low; there is a hard limit on how many the app will send in a day. Message and data rates may apply.
How to stop
Reply STOP to any text from us and the texts stop. Signing in still works: your sign-in code is not part of this, so stopping the texts never locks you out of the app.
A Volunteer Coordinator can also take your number off your record, and you can change or remove it yourself once you are signed in.
Getting in touch
Write to rob@heckart.me — about the messages, about your record, or about anything else here.