December 1st update on ISPMB Mustangs

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I’m posting this because so many people are asking questions and want to know what’s going on.

The State Attorney in South Dakota said he’s willing to consider proposals for the situation at the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros (ISPMB http://www.ispmb.org ). This includes evidence that funding will be available to the ISPMB for the next 18 months for the organization to get on their feet. He also wants money to cover all the county’s costs of caring for the ISPMB Mustangs. For example, if the ISPMB can pay them through January 1st if he would consider granting an extension for adoptions to occur, etc. Basically in the same breath he said the county will continue forward preparing for the sale of ISPMB Mustangs at public auction because the county has a lien on the majority of the 700 ISPMB Mustangs–Not the 20% who are being allowed to be adopted in this first leg of adoption. The State Attorney’s name is Steve Aberle and his number is (605) 865-3528 .

I heard that through donations the ISPMB has been paying off the money owed to the county to feed the mustangs. Adoptions will reduce the herd size. With a reduced herd, a sustainable business plan and help with management Karen Sussman could turn this around and save Wild Horse Annie’s Legacy organization.

Why did the organizations with millions in the bank wait for this crisis to finally help the ISPMB Mustangs with some hay? Why didn’t organizations help ISPMB when the Director needed it and when she asked to avoid this crisis? Did they want her to fail?

What happened when the PZP grants for birth control studies were over around 2012? Is this when the ISPMB started to be financially challenged?

I bet it would help if the ISPMB could move to a huge ranch with grazing to lower their hay costs.Then they could graze half of the year.

The money numbers I hear from the Sheriff and from the State Attorney that are needed to stop the rest of the ISPMB Mustangs from going to sale, are different amounts. The State Attorney wants an escrow account. He claims it costs $50,000. a month to feed them hay.

It’s going to cost the county a lot of money to get the ISPMB mustangs to sale in the middle of the winter. Horses don’t sell for much at auction in South Dakota. Of course that’s what the Kill-Buyers are counting on. A wealthy PRO-SLAUGHTER activist lives in South Dakota. She arrived at ISPMB weeks ago with trailers hoping to load them up with mustangs from Wild Horse Annie’s organization. Karen Susssman kicked the slime off the property.

It appears the State Attorney has at least one proposal on the table from the newly formed Wild Horse Sanctuary Alliance who has been working with Elaine Nash according to her update. I wonder if HSUS is part of this Sanctuary Alliance too? There could be some other proposals on the table as well.

December 30th I was told that all the adoptions that were approved by Karen A. Sussman by midnight would be honored and the mustangs protected. I don’t know when adoption approval letters are going out as I’m not involved with adoption approvals. So please be patient.

For all adopters needing transportation assistance, make sure you have filled out paperwork with the Fleet of Angels (www.FLEETofANGELS.org) who I believe has been receiving donations for transportation to help this rescue.

Adopters are required to pay for the Coggins and health certificates. If you are adopting a lot of ISPMB Mustangs and require financial assistance for Coggins, etc. then I encourage you to start a fundraiser on www.YOUCARING.com and share it with your network of family and friends.

Personally I find the lack of transparency and lack of updates with regards to this situation troubling. It creates a hotbed for Facebook rumors and drama. I hope the South Dakota State Attorney and/or the Dewey County Sheriff’s Dept. will start posting daily updates on Facebook because so many people are concerned.

I don’t want too see the Kill-Buyers get any ISPMB Mustangs and I don’t want too see any euthanized unless they are unable to heal.

I’ve received reports that the paid PRO-SLAUGHTER Trolls have been bullying adopters and spreading lies. Stand Strong for the lives of these wild horses you are protecting!

Several people have contacted me who will take the blind, special needs and old mustangs. A lot of those people turned in adoption applications.

The proposal to euthanize ISPMB Mustangs through a “compassion adoption” is outrageous and sets the wrong example for the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Congress. I hope people realize–after the tremendous effort our team leaders put out to bring in hundreds of homes for ISPMB Mustangs–that unless the wild horses are severely ill or injured people want to save their lives.

I’ve asked Fleet of Angels for the final count of the total number of ISPMB Mustangs who have offers for adoption and I look forward to the answer. I’m so thankful so many people worked so hard in the last 3 days to get adoption applications in. It’s evidence that these wild horses are wanted and deserve to live.

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I’m so grateful for the outpouring of support to find homes for the ISPMB Mustangs. It’s a bit unclear what’s happening behind the scenes right now. I hope we will get updates from county officials and ISPMB in the future. Let’s see how this all plays out and pray for miracles.

 

For the Wild Ones,

Anne Novak

Volunteer Executive Director

Protect Mustangs

P.O. Box 5661

Berkeley, California 94705

www.ProtectMustangs.org

Protect Mustangs is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of native and wild horses.

URGENT: Adopters and Boarding needed for Mustangs coming out of South Dakota #NoKILLMustangs

I just got off the phone with the Dewey County Sheriff. The counties and State Attorney are in a meeting now to decide what they are going to do with the 700 Mustangs from the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros (ISPMB) currently in their care and control. More Team Leaders are needed to each find homes for 28 mustangs. Call me if you can help 415-531-8454 The deadline to get in adoption applications is Wednesday November 30th at 6:00 PM California time. Please adopt ISPMB Mustangs from Wild Horse Annie’s Organization and Save their lives!

I have heard that people are asking for donations to euthanize the ISPMB Mustangs and I find that disgusting! No excuse for euthanasia when adoption effort isn’t flowing. Fix it please!Even the older mustangs deserve to live!  #NoKILL.

If everyone works together we can find homes for all the ISPMB Mustangs that need homes! Spread the word and find adopters! The clock is ticking . . . Get the adoption applications filled out, sent in, approved, load the ISPMB Mustangs with donated panels and get them in trailers headed for safety. I do not know exactly how many need to be re-homed but in times like these we must prepare for the worst and pray for the best. The Sheriff told me they have control of the ISPMB Mustangs as of December 1st.

We have reports of many applications being backlogged. Let’s get all the people needed involved to help move it forward to save the lives of ISPMB Mustangs.

We ask that the ISPMB Mustangs be protected and that people Do NOT Euthanize ISPMB wild horses and do not sell them at auction especially when the Tree Leaders are hard at work finding adopters and boarding for the mustangs! Working together round the clock we have found homes for more than 100 ISPMB wild horses just today and it’s only noon on Tuesday Nov 29th California time.

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We have people willing to board adopted ISPMB mustangs through the winter in Colorado so you can have them hauled to your home after winter is over and the roads are clear. One awesome team leader will board 28 ISPMB mustangs that belong to adopters for about $175 each per month in Colorado and that includes hay. They will even board YOUR ISPMB Mustang for the life of your horse!

More boarding situations are coming forward and we need more offers please! Call me at 415-531-8454 if you can board adopted ISPMB Mustangs through the winter. Transport is needed too!

We can board a few at our new farm in Walnut Creek short-term. There are people in Reno who can board your adopted ISPMB Mustangs for under $200 a month (including hay) too!

We are looking for places in South Dakota to cheaply board your ISPMB Mustangs over the winter until transport can easily flow in and out in the Spring! There are solutions. PLEASE ADOPT TODAY! #NoKILL

If people euthanize the ISPMB Mustangs because their adoption plan didn’t work then they are sending the message to the Bureau of Land Management and Congress that they should euthanize BLM wild horses too. Do you realize the message you are sending out?

Here’s the new adoption form. Be sure to click on the button to have a copy of your application sent to you: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSdXEVFZhWzY6qKuPr…/viewform

Please get your Applications in to ISPMB! Do not KILL older wild horses or any of them! Give them a chance! Open up the bottleneck and approve adoption applications please!

For the Wild Ones,

Anne Novak

Volunteer Executive Director

Protect Mustangs

P.O. Box 5661

Berkeley, California 94705

www.ProtectMustangs.org

Protect Mustangs is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of native and wild horses.

 

URGENT: Action plan to adopt out 700 slaughter bound wild horses by 6 p.m. November 30th

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Action plan below

I offered to go out to the International Society for Mustangs and Burros (ISPMB) in Lantry, South Dakota back in early October with a friend who previously had a nationwide horse transport business for show horses and had started out working for Bob Hubbard. My request to come out to take photos and videos to generate adoption interest from our network of supporters was refused.

I was told that someone was in charge of all the adoptions and that everything was taken care of. That’s fine. All I wanted to do was to have my boots on the ground to help our network of people adopt these fabulous wild horses from Wild Horse Annie’s organization the way I have helped adopt out many other mustangs.

November 1st we signed a lease for an 8 acre farm 25 miles east of San Francisco and so I’ve been very busy starting to fix the place up to bring horses in. I knew I could travel before November but not afterwards.

When I heard that only a fraction of the ISPMB mustangs had been adopted I hoped and prayed I could find someone to help me with boots on the ground in South Dakota. I called around and found someone who had gone back to South Dakota to help teach children on the reservation. Her name is Nancy.

Last week I offered to send Nancy to take photos for potential adopters but my request was again refused. I told Nancy I couldn’t send her.

I was told 1000 photos were on Facebook . . .

It’s easy to get lost on Facebook. . . How could I guarantee the mustangs from the photos were still there?  I was hoping to help adopt some ISPMB mustangs, the way I know how to do it–with boots on the ground. This time it would have been Nancy’s boots–except my offer to send her was refused.

As it turns out, Nancy went out of her own free will. Her on-site offer to take photos for adoptions was refused so she left.

My plan was to take photos of at least 60 mustangs, place them and generate interest for others to get all the mustangs to safe places. I’ve been feeling so sad and so helpless as I’m sure many of you do. I don’t want any of these mustangs to go to slaughter!

I’ve seen posts on the Sheriff’s Facebook page made by potential adopters who aren’t being served. They want to adopt, they have filled out and turned in applications but people aren’t getting back to them. This is a huge rescue effort and I imagine this bottleneck is normal if there aren’t enough people involved so I’m not casting blame. This is, what it is.

Let’s turn this around and make things work to get all the mustangs adopted, but not delivered, in 3 days! The deadline I believe is 6:00 p.m. November 30th. Together we can save their lives!

Previously I suggested that many leaders should be at the helm of this rescue so they could facilitate the rescue of ISPMB mustangs within their networks. I can’t sit on my hands any more and let up to 700 mustangs go to auction where they will end up being purchased by kill-buyers.

Here is my proposal for the next 3 days:

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 Picture this: At least 25 Tree Leaders at the top of their trees (networks). They each find adopters that will take a total of 28 ISPMB mustangs! Tree Leaders are going to find adopters (private parties, nonprofits, rescues, ranches), answer questions, encourage and help adopters fill out and send in their applications. Tree leaders can help find boarding for adopters if needed.

Here’s how we break it down: 25 X 28 = 700 mustangs saved from the kill buyer auction before the auction!

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At this point I want to ask you to open your hearts and PLEASE fill out an application to adopt ISPMB wild horses and save them from slaughter! You could board them somewhere if you don’t have room at your place. The legacy ISPMB mustangs are from Wild Horse Annie’s organization!

1.) Fill out the application here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdXEVFZhWzY6qKuPr5qAzaQcFF2-s7Ojpx-n1Qqi8zHgYlWjg/viewform

2.) Make sure to click on the button to have a copy send to your email

3.) Adoption contract agreement terms are negotiable, so line through any terms that you feel are unacceptable and initial those lines. The agreement to protect the horses from slaughter is non-negotiable.

4.) If you want me to follow up to ensure your application gets processed then please send a copy of your adoption application to me by TEXT to 415-531-8454 or email it to Contact@ProtectMustangs.org . I will make sure the group doing the adoptions gets your application and I will follow up on your behalf if you request that I do so.

5.) Let’s get the adoption applications approved then you can work with Fleet of Angels (FOA) to haul them out to safety! There might be some grants from FOA for hauling.

6.) Tree Leaders: Call me 415-531-8454 with any questions.

All applications are going to be approved by the ISPMB/Fleet of Angels team. Protect Mustangs will not approve any adoptions.

I don’t know exactly how many need to be adopted and how many the ISPMB will be allowed to keep if any. Of the up to 700 ISPMB mustangs left, I heard there are more than 60 mare-foal pairs who need adoption. I know that together we can find homes for ALL the ISPMB mustangs that need to get to safe places.

I was told the Sheriff will take control of the ISPMB mustangs December 1st to sell them at the livestock auction where kill-buyers are waiting for them.

I ask you to open your hearts, fill out and turn in the applications to adopt these wild horses without seeing their photos. You can help save them from being picked up by the Sheriff December 1st, shoved into trailers, hauled to a disease infested auction house in Phillips, South Dakota with kill buyers licking their chops at the hundreds of wild horses they can buy to take to slaughter!

Now that you have read this please become a Tree Leader to get 28 ISPMB wild mustangs adopted. Thank you and Bless you!

For the Wild Ones,

Anne Novak

Volunteer Executive Director

Protect Mustangs

P.O. Box 5661

Berkeley, California 94705

www.ProtectMustangs.org

Protect Mustangs is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of native and wild horses.

How [Not] To Tame A Wild Mustang

By Elaine Nash

When we had a large ranch near Santa Fe, NM, the US Forest Service had apparently heard that I’m a softie for any person or animal in need, because one of their guys from a district on the NM-CO border called one cold winter night and asked if I would mind taking in a thin two-year old mustang stallion that had been pushed out of his family band by the herd stallion. Without the team effort of the herd to assist him, he was unable to paw up enough grass from under the deep snow to sustain him through that especially harsh winter.  Of course, I said yes.

The next day, after a harrowing six-hour-long, snowy drive deep into the mountain wilderness of northern NM, we arrived just before dark at the US Forest Service corrals, where we saw a pretty bedraggled and gangly bay two year old colt standing alone in the large panel enclosure he’d had been driven into earlier by USFS cowboys. As I backed our trailer up to the corral, I found myself wondering just what I was getting myself into.  Although I’d owned and trained horses all my life, I’d never had an actual wild mustang in my care before. I anticipated that just getting this wild horse loaded into our ‘cave on wheels’ might be a real test of my horsemanship skills.

As I walked past the back of the trailer and eyed the open slot beside Keebler- the ‘buddy’ horse we’d brought along, I imagined that a space just half the width of a two-horse trailer would probably look awfully small to a horse who’d only known wide open spaces in his life.  I walked to the center of the pen and was looking around- considering how best to use fence panels to create a chute for guiding the mustang toward that tiny, now-dark space in the trailer, when I heard a soft “clump, clump, clump”.  I turned around just in time to see that ‘wild’ mustang- who’d never seen a horse trailer in his life, walk right up the ramp into his spot in that trailer- where he calmly started munching on hay. That unexpected display of courage and common sense turned out to be just the first of many surprises that we were to enjoy during our adventure as owners of Poco-the ”wild” mustang.

As soon as we got home we brushed and combed- as gently as we could, years of tangles out of his long black mane and tail while he was still in the trailer, and he hardly flinched.  I chalked that up to his fatigue and probable trauma from the trailer ride. We then released him out into a roomy private pen, where he could live quietly for a few weeks while we gave him the groceries he needed to put on some weight, and where he could get acquainted with our other horses through the fence. By the time spring rolled around we’d had him gelded and he was back in fine physical form. We turned him out into our spacious pasture to ‘run free’ with the our herd of family horses.  With noble- and romantic, intentions I had decided to ‘respect his wild origins’ and leave him untamed for life- but Poco had something else in mind.

All my childhood, movie-inspired images of captive wild horses yearning to be free faded fast as Poco made it quite clear that he much preferred the barn to the pasture, human company to that of other horses, and he thought that having good hay and grain delivered right into a feeder was clearly better than going to the trouble of grazing on wild grass. Suffice it to say that Poco turned out to be more puppy dog than wild horse.  Teaching him to lead quickly became an effort to keep him out of our laps, caps, and pockets. He allowed me to ride him the first time he was saddled, he never bucked a single step with anyone, and the greatest danger that a person could be in while in his presence was having their belt loop tugged on or their hair nibbled.  Poco was like a country boy who visited the big city, liked living in the lap of luxury, and decided to stay.  He never displayed a single trait of wildness.

Now, I’m not saying that we should capture and domesticate America’s wild horses.  In fact, I think that our wild horses should, in almost every case, be left to live their wild lives on America’s public lands as the longstanding US Wild Mustang and Burro Act dictates.  But- as long as BLM and other government agencies continue on their mission to decrease the size of wild herds in deference to grazing beef cattle and the exploration for gas and oil on America’s vast public lands, mustangs will captured, and they will need homes.

I hope that anyone who considers adopting a mustang can realize that in doing so, they are not taking on a horse whose heart will always belong to the wild. Rather, they are creating an opportunity for a displaced horse with an incredible heart and spirit to form
you.

(Note: Common sense still dictates that wild horses should only be handled/trained by people who have a significant amount of experience with horses.)

Notable equine advocate and founder of Fleet of Angels, Elaine Nash, writes at The Nash Rambler.