Justin McLeod

Region: South

Justin McLeod is a life-long resident of North Carolina, having grown up in Harnett and Brunswick Counties then moved to Cumberland County after marrying his wife, Tori, and should be relocating soon to a 55-acre farm in Moore County.

Justin grew up managing dairy and beef cattle on his family’s farms. He never had any formal training related to horses but some of his cousin’s had horses and he would venture out on trail rides with them locally and occasionally to Uwharrie National Forest. In 2006, he met Tori and that is where his love and understanding of horses along with education and training truly began. Justin continues to develop and improve upon his horsemanship skills through the study of Natural Horsemanship and learning from other well-versed equine professionals locally and abroad.

He owns, with his wife, 4Hooves Large Animal Services, LLC which is a well-established equine and livestock services business based in the sandhills of North Carolina. 4HLAS provides a wide variety of emergency and non-emergency services from local and long-distance transport and end of life removal and burial to handling critical care transports and equine event stand-bys with their equine ambulance and managing rescue operations for incidents involving large animals as well as instructing training courses on large animal technical rescue and emergency preparedness. Justin and Tori, along with their team of responders with 4HLAS, are members of the North Carolina State Animal Response Team (NC SART) and response partners with the American Society of Prevention to Cruelty of Animals (ASPCA) Field Response Team, Code 3 Associates Emergency Response Team, American Humane, and Animal Search and Rescue (ASAR) Response Team which deploy to assist with animal rescue and recovery operations during large scale incidents and natural disasters. (www.4HoovesSMART.com)

In addition, Justin is the Executive Director of Sandhills Horse Rescue which is a 501c3 non-profit equine rescue organization that specializes in rehabilitating critical care cases of neglect and abuse, specifically equines within North Carolina.

Aside from the above, currently Justin is a career Lieutenant and Emergency Medical Technician working full-time with Cotton Fire Rescue Department, a busy multifaceted fire department, along with working part-time and volunteering with another local fire and rescue department.

Justin holds numerous certifications in both human and animal emergency response and management. A few to mention are the following:
• Assistant Instructor with Technical Large Animal Emergency Rescue, Inc (TLAER Inc.)
• certified Level II Fire Emergency Services Instructor
• Fire Life Safety Educator
• certified Equine Cruelty Investigator
• certified Animal Chemical Immobilization Technician
• certified Technical Large Animal Rescue Specialist
• certified in Incident Command System / National Incident Management System
• certified in Hazardous Materials Operations

When Justin manages to have some “time off”, he can often be found spending time with Tori, doing things around the family farm, hunting and fishing, at the shooting range, or traveling with family and friends.