FREYA

Freya was born in Hog Creek, Oregon in 1999 and rounded up in 2005. It gives us great happiness to return her to the place where she was born wild and free.

She was rescued by us around the same time as Barnaby, Chester and Bella from a person in Stroud, Oklahoma. We had tried to save her from the kill pen, but a mass bailer took her out before we could. Sadly, at that time, she hadn’t looked as thin as she does in the photo on the left. She was sent to a bad quarantine and disgracefully further starved down to skin and bones. I wish this wasn’t such a common story, but tragically, it happens all too often. Freya’s health and weight deteriorated until we asked to take over her care.

Her kill pen video showed a terrified and skinny mustang. We were told she was wild and unhandled. As is often the case, she was gentle and affectionate once she felt safe with kind humans. Titled in 2005, we don’t know where she went from there, but she had clearly known love from someone before ending up at the kill pen. Even after all this, Freya always showed herself to be grace under pressure.

 We built her weight back up with good nutrition. Her bones are now all covered with a glorious and thick strawberry roan coat. Janelle adores her and took the photo on the right. She is back to being a healthy mare with a pretty star above soft eyes and a sweet nicker.

She possesses a quiet disposition, calm, collected, and thoughtful. When she was ready to be released, she took her rightful place among other mustangs. She continues to graze and recover in the peace and security that only comes from belonging to a herd.

Freya is a strong name I have always loved and was saving for just the right mustang. It’s an old Norse word for “lady” that was given to the goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and the afterlife in mythology. She was credited with bringing a form of magic to the gods that involved discerning the course of fate and changing it by weaving new events into being. Perhaps it was she who altered the course of this blessed mustang’s life by weaving her into the fabric of Sheldon’s herd at Skydog.

 #skydogfreya

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 2025 (H.R.1661 in the House and S.775 in the Senate). This bill would amend the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. Commonly known as the “Farm Bill”, this omnibus federal law includes several important provisions for animals. Among them, the Cat and Dog Meat Trade Prohibition Act, which makes it illegal to slaughter, transport, possess, purchase, sell, or donate dogs and cats, or their parts, for human consumption. This SAFE Act would extend the prohibition to equines. Specifically, prohibiting a person from knowingly slaughtering an American equine for human consumption; or shipping, transporting, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donating an American equine to be slaughtered for human consumption. 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.

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.

Bills from the previous 118th Congress that we hope will be introduced again this 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.