Thursday, September 19, 2013

Flashback to Ghost Dance & Sage

Calico Mountain Mustangs Newest Residents of Wild Horse Sanctuary

On Sunday, August 22, 2010 the Wild Horse Sanctuary welcomed two Calico Mountain mustangs to its herd. The two mares were rescued by Wild Horse Sanctuary support. On Sunday, August 22, 2010 the Wild Horse Sanctuary welcomed two Calico Mountain mustangs to its herd. The two mares were rescued by Wild Horse Sanctuary supporter and author Terri Farley from a herd of wild horses from the Calico Mountains in northern Nevada that were part of a round-up conducted by the Bureau of Land Management last winter.

The two wild mustangs once roamed public lands near the tribal lands of the Shoshones in northern Nevada.
 “I was determined to rescue an adobe and white pinto mare with the rare Medicine Hat markings. Such horses were held sacred to some Native American tribes,” explains Farley.

Because the Shoshones last stand against invaders included the Ghost Dance, a ceremony of rebirth for fallen warriors, Farley began thinking of the Medicine Hat mare as Ghost Dancer. Terri Farley also rescued Sage, a sorrel filly who was captured on the same day as Ghost Dancer.

With a handful of supporters looking on, Wild Horse Sanctuary President and Co-Founder Dianne Nelson opened the gates at 11:00 a.m. and Ghost Dancer and Sage scampered into the Sanctuary, joining a herd of wild horses munching on hay from their morning feeding.

Terri Farley is the author of the popular Phantom Stallion series of books set in the Calico Mountains in northern Nevada and her fictional herds are based on the mustangs that roam there.

Labels: Calico mountains, ghost dancer, Sage, Wild Horse Sanctuary

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 7:13 AM   0 comments

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Friday, July 30, 2010

Auction Day: Calico Mountain Mustangs



Dear Readers,
Ghost Dancer will be traveling with me to the Wild Horse Sanctuary in California.
Shell Flower won't.
I'd never been part of ANY kind of auction, before (except fictional ones!), let alone an EBay style Internet auction, but my friend Anne advised me to hang back.
I made initial bids on Ghost Dancer and Shell Flower to make sure my computer worked on the Auction website, then waited 'til the last minutes of the auction to bid again.
That doesn't mean I wasn't WATCHING from the minute my eyes opened Wednesday, and I noticed (so did lots of you!) that a Texas bidder -- if you're reading, wow, you have fast fingers! -- had replace me as high-bidder on both horses.
My hands were shaking. My neck got stiff. I spoke harshly to Sherlock the cat when he sat on my lap and tapped the computer keyboard with a gentle gray paw.
And I worried. It wasn't likely, but what if the other bidder had Bad Intentions? I decided I had to make GHOST DANCER my first priority. At fifteen years old, she was listed as a sale authority horse. BLM discourages bidders from selling such horses for "commercial purposes" but she could legally be headed for out-of-the-country slaughter as soon as she was in the wrong hands.
BLM, in theory at least, is supposed to keep an eye on adoption horses like SHELL for a year.
But Ghost Dancer won't be traveling to California alone :) !
At the advice of a nice woman in BLM's Eastern States office, I picked a "safety net" horse.
I narrowed my choices down to mares no one had bid on.
Among them, I searched for one captured on the same day, in the same place as Ghost Dancer. I found her!
Little sorrel #0795, is now named Sage.
Hug your horses,
Terri


p.s. GHOST is 15 and SAGE is 2.
Who knows? They might even be mother and daughter.

Labels: Calico mountains, ghost dancer, Internet auction, mustangs, Sage, Shell Flower

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 5:09 PM   5 comments

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Monday, June 21, 2010

More death at the hands of BLM

Dear Readers,
Three more stallions have died at the hands of BLM.
Those of you who know horses are aware that gelding is a common and routine procedure.
There is no reason that three wild stallions should have died during that procedure.
Not only are the bloodlines of the Calico Mountains horses vanishing, but the horses are being tortured in the process.
More later,
Terri

Labels: BLM, Calico mountains, mustangs, wild horses

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 11:03 PM   0 comments

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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Range runners in captivity

Dear Readers,
I just returned from the Fallon facility and learned that a mass gelding of mustangs begins on Monday. I haven't transcribed my notes yet but when I asked why the "tours" will end (they will resume on selected Sundays), Susie Stokke, the BLM staffer leading us around said "we have work to do" and verified that they would be gelding about 900 stallions and colts old enough to be weaned.
It's going to be an awful, bloody business and it's made worse by the cage.
I've seen these used to contain horses for vaccinations and freeze branding, but missed the fact that the metal cage can be turned and rotated so the gelding can be performed through the bars.
Stokke verified that every male horse will be gelded. It's standard procedure, she said, like neutering cats, so that there won't be "indiscriminate breeding" by adopted horses.
I'll write more later, and share photos from Mark Terrell, an amazing wild horse photographer who accompanied me, but this issue has a time element, so I've contacted In Defense of Animals and the Cloud Foundation for help. I've also heard from Holly Hazard of the Humane Society of the United States.

If there's any chance that the Calico horses will be preserved as a heritage herd -- and I saw once more the unique characteristics of these horses which made them the model for the fictional Phantom's herd. One smoky dun with dread-locked mane just stole my heart, but then so did a fuzzy bay baby and a majestic Medicine Hat stallion who carried himself like royalty in exile.
If these male horses are all castrated, there's no do-over. The gene pool for the Calico Mountain horses will have been reduced to the few horses BLM left on the range, and though they may be hardy survivors, nothing will ever be the same.
Terri

Labels: BLM, Calico Comples, Calico mountains, castration, Fallon corrals, gelding, Holly Hazard, IDA, mustangs, the Cloud Foundation, wild horses

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 12:55 PM   5 comments

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