WILLOW, COCO, SUGAR, & TWO SPOTS
These four babies were quite honestly the biggest rescue we had ever done to date at Skydog Oregon. Days after the Warm Springs roundup had completed in Oregon, the BLM Burns Corrals asked us to take some injured and orphaned babies who needed intensive help. They told us they would be dead within days if we couldn’t take them as they were all in bad shape. We said yes and drove to the corrals to get them. That same day we picked up Grace and her baby Sunshine too. We got the four babies home and had the vet come to examine them immediately. Whisper had a shattered jaw, Sugar had major lacerations to her back legs which were open wounds from being trampled in the roundup pen. Coco and Two Spots were both weak from not nursing and we worried for them all, but especially the tiny girls who seemed so weak almost to the point of giving up.
We had all four of them in a double stall in the barn and it was mid-winter and we had to gentle these wild babies before we could treat them. Sugar in particular needed daily cold hosing and ointment and meds for infection, but all of them needed constant handling. Janelle worked her magic and we were able to nurse them all back to health and then turn them out in the arena together where they took long naps in the sunshine and kept each other company until the day we decided to try putting Maggie in with them. She had lost her own baby in the corrals recently and we hoped it would be a fit. It was miraculous. She took all four of them under her wing and they followed her like a little line of ducklings. She taught them how to be wild mustangs, albeit with a lot of human loving, and the whole family is still together today. #skydogwillow #skydogcoco #skydogsugar #skydogtwospots
Mustangs & 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.