she was so big!! She was quite a bit bigger than all the other horses, including the stallion. But I also learned that she was actually very gentle – as wild horses go – I just had to deal with her different attitude that went with that size.
The oldest yearling was that same reddish/brown color and I later learned is called a sorrel or a chestnut. He had two white back feet instead of the 3 white feet that Bucket had. He seemed a gentle soul and tried hard to keep out of trouble with the mares. I started calling him John Boy. The yearling gray filly was very aloof and never came close enough for me to get to know her.
So, it is important for us to stop here and make note: we have the stallion, the 3 mares, Bucket, John Boy and the little gray yearling filly, an almost black newborn filly with a white blaze that was 9 weeks old at the first of June, an almost black colt with 2 white back feet that was 6 weeks old at the first of June and a brand new 2 day old sorrel colt with strawberry blonde mane and tail and a very wide white blaze. Why is this important? You ask…..
I was watching out the windows late in the afternoon and the sun was really low in the sky. Low enough that it kept me from seeing clearly in that direction. It was actually very pretty, until things started happening in the field out in front of the house. I saw a solitary horse out in the field. Just one. How weird is that?!? It looked to be gray but with the glare of the sun, it was hard to tell. Then I saw the gray stallion come out of the trees and chased it around the field like he was trying to hurt it or run it off. I went outside to get a better look and realized it was Bossie’s yearling filly. She was running from him as if her life depended on it. At this point I am very fearful for what is happening to this little girl, but helpless to do anything about it. I didn’t know them very well and this little girl was as afraid of me as she was the stallion. I could see Bossie back in the trees just watching. After a few hours of this, the herd took off and left the yearling in the field by herself. She was so young and it was getting dark. I didn’t know if she would be able to survive the night, since there were predators everywhere. In my happy place, I hoped that the herd would all show up together the next morning, but I didn’t sleep hardly at all that night.
Morning finally made its appearance and the sun was shining through the east windows. I went to the west windows that look out over the field and looked to see if there were any horses – to see if that yearling filly was back with the herd. Not only were they not in the field together, but they weren’t there at all. Then finally I spotted one….. it wasn’t the yearling filly. It was the 6 week old colt all by himself. I looked all around for the herd and/or his mother (who was one of the mares I had named – Daisy) and they just simply weren’t around. This little bitty colt was here all by himself. Now I am starting to get very concerned and a tad bit freaked out.
Daisy and Stranded
I ran downstairs and out the door and slowly walked toward the baby who was out by the fence. I wanted to run, but I knew how scared the babies were of me, so I had to keep calm and see if I could get close to the little guy. I had no idea what I would do with him if I was able, but I guessed I would figure that out as I went along. As I got closer he looked at me. He wanted to trust me. But he couldn’t. He finally ran away following the fence line to the north. There was a herd of cows and their calves there and it looked like he was running to them.
He came by 4 times that day and I was not able to get close to him. He was obviously looking for his mother. He kept whinnying all the while he was looking. But no Daisy came. It made me want to cry. Each time he would run back to the herd of range cows with their calves.
The next day he came by again with a herd of cows and their calves. He was hanging out on the edge of that herd and the cows seemed to be okay with him being there. He was antsy and moving around, but mostly in and out among the calves. At least he wasn’t going to be immediate cougar bait as long as the cows could tolerate him, thus keeping him from being by himself and prey for any variety of predator. By six weeks old he was eating hay and grass so he wouldn’t starve, but he wasn’t getting any milk from Mama Daisy and I didn’t know how horrible that was for him. Next I started making phone calls to neighbors because I didn’t have any idea what I should do.
The first neighbor I called dropped everything to come help me look for him. We drove everywhere we could think looking for the herd of cows with a colt mixed in. In our journey we didn’t find the baby or the herds – horses or cows, but we did find the yearling filly that had been out in the field by herself two days before. She was a couple of miles away down in the valley and outside of a fence with 2 big beautiful geldings – she had found herself a herd. I had brought an orange bucket with grain just in case we found any of the herd and we used the bucket to get close to the filly. It worked and my neighbor said she would find her a home. So at least I had hope that the filly would be safe and not cougar bait.
The next day I contacted a rescue who sent a couple down to look for the missing colt. They drove all over these back roads, private and county, looking for the baby. I hadn’t seen the colt in a couple of days now. I called another neighbor to go with me on foot thus looking in places you can’t get to by vehicle. We travelled all over the area around my house. Nothing turned up, this baby or the herd. I had been told he could only live 3 or 4 days without mother’s milk and we were on day three. I was so afraid he would die out there all by himself from lack of mare’s milk or that something would eat him before I could find him.
I was frantic. I had been frantic for nearly 2 days now. How in the world could I save this little one if I couldn’t find him? And what in the world happened to the herd and his mother? Why weren’t they coming back? On day 4 I decided to go looking for the herd (baby only had four days, remember). In my travels I had been told of quite a commotion that had happened the day all this started. It was far enough away that I couldn’t hear it from home but a lot of others had been aware of some sort of battle that first night. A large gray mare had been spotted running down the canyon, by herself, at breakneck speed. We described the little filly and no, that wasn’t the same horse folks had seen. They kept saying how big the mare was. So that had to be Daisy, the missing colt’s mother. Something awful must have separated the pair because mares never leave their healthy babies behind.
The only thought I had was that maybe the herd went back to where they started – where they were set loose. I didn’t know exactly where that was, but I knew I could find the right canyon. It took about half an hour to get down the valley and up into that canyon, because we had to go by road – as the crow flies it wasn’t very far at all, but by road it was just over 10 miles. That canyon was similar to the one I lived in which was a rough dirt road with lots of twists and turns as it wound up the hillside. I took someone with me to help me look in all the nooks and crannies that horses might hang out in. We watched both sides of the road as I drove slowly up into the woods.
Finally I came to an open field not far from a barn and house and there were horses in the field. I stopped the truck and got out to see if this was the herd I was looking to find. They were a ways away from the road and they were on private property, but I could tell it was the same horses. They were all there, including both gray mares, the two month old little filly and the brand new baby -- everyone except the lost 6 week old colt and, of course, that little yearling filly. They all turned and looked at me but didn’t come toward me at all. I talked to them – I have no idea if they could even hear me from that distance – hoping to let them know that it was me. They just watched me. They never moved toward me.
I felt like crying, but that wasn’t going to do me any good, so I got back in the pickup and decided the only thing to do now was go home. I knew where they were and maybe whoever lived there was going to take care of them and I would just have to get that baby out of my mind. So I drove up the road a bit and turned around and started the journey home back down the same horrible dirt road we came up. Of course it took about a half hour to make it back. On the way back we kept
