Milo

This incredible mustang was 15 years old when we saved him on Giving Tuesday 2024. He joins Casper, Snow, and San Jose as the fourth gray horse we saved this year, followed by Snowball! Milo was rounded up from Bordo Atravesado, New Mexico in 2011 when he was just a baby. He is our very first mustang from New Mexico. We now have wild horses from every single US state except Montana.

If you read about this Herd Management Area (HMA), it consists of nearly 20,000 acres, yet the AML is set at 40-60 horses. This is a ludicrously low number that threatens the genetic viability of the herd. A minimum of 150 horses is required to prevent inbreeding.

Milo’s herd comes in an array of colors including buckskins, roans, grays, palominos, bays, sorrels and blacks. There is a mixture of vegetation which sounds poetic, including black grama, New Mexico feather grass, sideoats, blue grama, galleta, sand dropseed, bottlebrush squirreltail, burro grass, Indian rice grass, wolftail, winter fat, mountain mahogany, and sumac. Elk, mule deer, pronghorn, coyotes, and songbirds all share this land and are allowed to live there in peace except the wild horses.

We don’t know where he was before this year, but we do know he Milo was was “saved” by a fraud “rescue” a few months ago. They raised funds for him and other animals, then betrayed them horribly by dumping them back into the slaughter pipeline. Milo was terrified in the Kansas kill pen, shaking and confused. Our friends @3sistersequinerefuge took two young fillies from his group.

Milo is tame. Janelle was able to halter him and lead him out to his new pasture. As always with new rescues, we wanted him to have some friends as soon as possible. Patron and Cosmo in their gorgeous winter coats were the first to meet him and they were all perfect gentlemen. After performing the perfunctory motions of male mustang introductions, Milo trotted off to meet the rest of the gang.

Milo is moving from horror to home and realizing his circumstances just got a whole lot better. Skydog is the last stop for wild - and not so wild - souls, when they muster the courage to step out of the trailers that hauled them here. His life is his own again and we look forward to seeing what choices he makes for his future.

#skydogmilo

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.