9 Wild Horses. S Carol Johnson

       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 our eyes open for a herd of cattle with a colt mixed in, but we didn’t spot them. By the time I got home I was feeling like a failure because I couldn’t fix this mess. Heck, I didn’t even know what the mess was, really.

      About an hour after I got home (this was just over an hour and half since I left the horses) I was looking out the windows of my living room, licking my wounds, and all of a sudden, running up over the ridge to the south, here comes the herd of horses I had left in that big field and, not only that, with them was the colt that had been missing the herd for 4 days!!!! They trotted to a stop in front of the house and barn. Baby started nursing immediately.

      Somehow, seeing me over by that field must have triggered something in the herd, or maybe in that stallion or in the lead mare…??? That reminded them they had a place where they were safe and could get grain. It could not have been a coincidence. The desire for grain must have outweighed whatever the trauma was that sent them running for their lives. In that short distance to get here (more or less, as the crow flies) they must have come across baby’s scent (or baby came across their scent – I’ll never know which) and they set about retrieving baby in the process. And boy, was baby hungry!!!

      Those 4 days were some of the strongest emotions I have ever felt in all my years. I was so worried over that baby and there wasn’t anything I could do to help him. The little filly had gotten kicked out of the herd for some reason and all we could do was find her a safe place to live. I didn’t understand any of it. But the story of the little filly wasn’t done yet.

      The neighbor that helped me look for baby and was with me when we found the little filly was true to her word. She found that little filly a home a couple of miles away and up on that hill to the north of me. The family had a couple of geldings so she would have herself another herd of three. There wasn’t any way to get her loaded into a trailer because she was wild and there wasn’t any way to contain her, so they bribed her with grain to get her to follow them home. It worked, even though it took several days; they finally got her up the hill to their place, to safety and to her new home.

      So that first week in June, 201, was finally over. What a stressful week!!! Little did I know that it was just the beginning of several emotional times trying to protect this herd.

      That kind of stress made me want to know what had happened – especially to that little filly. Why had she been kicked out of the herd? So I got