A New Year and New Beginnings

The following post is from the Youths’ Equine Alliance.

Northern Nevada – where the majority of captive horses are held – experienced record-breaking wind yesterday. Patty Bumgarner, a local advocate and friend of mine took these photos of the horses trying to endure the rough weather without the benefit of wind breaks or shelter.

Patty said, “This wind blew it hurt, had to cover my head
a few times with my jacket. And the horses & burros can’t find a way out of it. I got hit with tumble weeds around my ankles and it drew blood, can’t image how they feel getting hit by them.” When I saw the photos I could feel her pain and also the suffering of the horses.

How long will they wait for shelter or wind breaks? Some progress has been made at some facilities, but not at the ones where the majority of horses are held.

We have a ray of hope – there has been a new person put in charge of BLM oversight (announced January 19th.) His name is Louis Gohmert and today, we added his name to the Shelter4Horsespetition and we are anxiously awaiting presenting him with signatures to see what he will do to address the situation. So far we have about 22,000 signatures on that petition if you haven’t signed yet, please add your name!

In the last letter I shared this photo of a burro being “shot” from a helicopter. I have been told that the gun may be a tranquilizer gun. But the visual is real. The BLM has been put in charge of keeping the numbers of horses and burros down to 26,684. One of their suggestions rather than birth control is on-the-range euthanasia – which would look alot like this!

Please help us continue our mission. We urgently need to complete maintanence on our vehichle. This vehicle takes kids to field trips, us to care for horses, and me to speaking engagements. We put 30,000 miles on it in 2014! So now, we need brakes, tires, and more to keep it safe and ready-to-go for 2015. This week it will cost us $300 to keep it on the road.

We have so many good things going, my next update will be so much good news, I just know it, but we need your help to complete these works-in-progress like: setting up the children’s art gallery, protesting helicopter roundups, and finally getting a meeting with the governor on a project I’ve been working over a year on!

Thanks for your continued support. I know I can count on you.