Cavalier

Cavalier was 13 years old when we rescued him on Giving Tuesday 2024. He was named by photographers that followed him on the South Steens range in Oregon. My good friend @s.phiferphotography took the above photo of him in the wild. The comparison of that with the shot of him looking emaciated, terrified, and disorientated in the Texas kill pen is devastating.

Photographer Mustang Meg has followed South Steens horses for years and is very familiar with all the herds. She wrote this wonderful post about Cavalier on Facebook:

Cavalier

Really hard to believe... and I had no idea. Band stallion of a large band on Steens in SE Oregon we have photo-documented since the beginning, was pulled out of a killpen.

Cavalier is a beautiful 13-year-old bay mustang and recently found in a killpen in Texas - but gratefully JUST RESCUED by Oregon's Skydog Sanctuary (see their post dated Dec 3 2024). He's one of the lucky ones.... he was found before the unthinkable. Watch/follow Skydog for his return footage.

I will share a video (and/or a link) to see his very big band head to water (Aug 2022 just one month prior to that gather when his band was captured). We couldn't believe the size of his band - Fairly unusual, because he was the only dominant stallion with no lieutenants to back him, but somehow was able to manage a very large band of mares and foals... a testament to the amazing band stallion he was (in band size ranking to Cherokee, Dante', and Four Socks / Benson bands). Truly impressive.

How did he end up in the slaughter pipeline?

In 2004, there was an amendment to the 1971 Wild Free-roaming Horses and Burros Act allowing "sales without limits" of captive wild horses over the age of 10 and / or passed over for adoption three times... sadly that usually means the slaughter pipeline.

This once incredible icon of Steens Mt in SE Oregon, band stallion to one of the largest bands on the mountain in recent times, earned his rank and position over many years. This icon (like you've seen  Commander and Rango last year - thankfully also safe w Skydog) was found thin and despondent in a kill pen awaiting his death sentence.

How in the h*ll does this happen to our icons... these living legends? How dare our system puts these great mustangs in the path of peril... And to think, these are just horses "we know about". I shudder to think of other Steens legends (or other across our west states) we’ve followed over a dozen years and their final ends.

Heinous. My mind can’t even go there.

This broken system is heinous— putting mustangs such as Cavalier, who have risen the ranks along an hierarchy to earn the right of a band stallion...

and then be able to defend their mares and foals so long, because they are intelligent, experienced, and strong...

growing his band to about 24...

simply to be captured by "the system" and discarded without knowledge, understanding of history, or thought.

Heinous and unacceptable. And it needs to change.

I don't know the full story how his rescue came about, but regardless, thank goodness Skydog Sanctuary somehow learned about him and pulled him out from the unthinkable. Cavalier will be running sagebrush again for the remainder of his years.... safe now. Skydog and their associates finding these Steens mustangs in desperate need in my opinion are nothing short of earth angels.

Keep the WILD in our WEST!

Thank you to Mustang Meg for such a wonderful background on this boy. Please follow her on Facebook or Instagram to learn more about the wild lives of many of the South Steens horses that now have sanctuary at Skydog.

It’s heartbreaking to read that Cavalier had such a huge band that he won, fought for, and cared for so well. Photographer Shannon Phifer shared that he was an incredibly kind, attentive, and loving band stallion to his mares. Kamali was one of the mares in his band and Soleil is believed to have been his daughter by another mare, which is incredible.

It is wrong that so many of the horses we saved on #givingtuesday were from Oregon and landed in the slaughter pipeline or terrible hoarding situations. The BLM has to do better for these mustangs, especially the seniors who were so mighty and kings on the range, now reduced to emaciated, battered, terrified horses. Standing in a kill pen in Texas was no place for this incredible South Steens stallion to end up.

Wild horses over age 11 are sold as Sale Authority. The difference between this and the Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) is the owner buys the horse immediately and doesn't have to wait a year to get their title paperwork. This so often means they are dumped in the slaughter pipeline straight away. Cavalier suffered the fate that many older horses do and there has to be a solution to this broken system.

Again and again, the BLM tells us they don't have enough staff to care for, process, adopt out, or do compliance checks on these federally protected animals, but somehow they always manage to have enough people to keep rounding them up in massive numbers. The only protections granted them by unanimously by Congress in 1971 have now been whittled away to be practically meaningless. Only the bald eagle and the wild horse have ever been granted protections by our Government - and President Richard Nixon signed it into law.

Cavalier was taken to the safety of our quarantine in Oklahoma. This is the same one that cared for Commander and Rango, two other South Steens stallions, who were deeply traumatized by what happened to them after they were removed from the range. Cavalier will be home with us in Oregon after Christmas 2025. We can’t wait to meet him, pay him the honor and respect he deserves, and restore his dignity.

#skydogcavalier

Mustangs and burros need your help 

In addition to supporting our work by donating, becoming a patron on Patreon or sponsoring a Skydog, there are several important pieces of legislation to protect American equines currently moving through Congress. It only takes a few minutes to contact your Rep and Senators and urge them to support these bills:

Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act of 2023 (H.R. 3475 in the House / S.2307 in the Senate). This bill will shut down the slaughter pipeline that sends some 20,000 American horses and donkeys to savagely monstrous deaths in foreign slaughterhouses every year.

The Wild Horse & Burro Protection Act of 2023 (H. R. 3656) This bill will prohibit the use of helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft in the management of wild mustangs and burros on public lands, and require a report on humane alternatives to current management practices.

Ejiao Act of 2023 (H.R. 6021). To ​​ban the sale or transportation of ejiao, a gelatin made from boiling donkey skins, or products containing ejiao in interstate or foreign commerce, which brutally kills millions of donkeys primarily for beauty products and Chinese medicine.

You can Contact Members of Congress by calling the Capitol Switchboard (202) 224-3121‬, submitting contact forms on their individual websites, or sending one email to all three simultaneously at www.democracy.io

See our How to Help menu for other actions to ban zebra hunting at US canned hunt ranches, stop production of Premarin & other PMU drugs, and defund the Adoption Incentive Program.