She looked right at me and a terrible feeling overcame me. I moved a bit closer to the tree and saw it was Pixie laying on her side.
Then as I checked out the area around the spring, I saw a white horse laying in the shade of a large juniper tree. As we approached the family a lead mare who I recognized as ‘Shy’ came over to where we stood and checked us out she didn’t recognize Dave’s scent.Īs I explained to Dave what she was doing and the names of the horses we saw, something seemed wrong, the horses were acting a bit odd. © Laura SimpsonĪfter a brief hike over mixed terrain we arrived at a family of wild horses standing near a large spring partially surrounded by juniper trees. Dave was interested in assessing the prodigious fine fuel loading in the area of our ranch in and around the Soda Mountain Wilderness Area due to the severe depletion of deer by predators, and which deer no longer graze off the abundant grass and brush, which creates hazardous fuel loading. In mid-June 2018, during the primary filming of our local herd in regard to a documentary about Wild Horse Fire Brigade by university film students from Colorado, we filmed Pixie and her foal we named Dove in the forest where they happily grazed and napped.Ībout a week later, I revisited the area this time with an Oregon Department of Forestry District Forester (Dave) who manages 1.8-million acres of forest in southwestern Oregon. The science of coherence is growing and more can be quickly learned by watching this 7-minute video: Here again some whisperers might call this reading or sensing the horse. Another important term however is ‘coherence’ and I can say that at times we engage in coherent dialog with the wild horses. Some horse whisperers may use different terminology I am still suffering some of the terminology learned in college physics. Pixie grew into a beautiful young mare an appaloosa just like her mom, and this past spring she had a filly, having lost her foal in the previous year to predators.Īnd over the course of hundreds of social interactions with these and other wild horses, Laura and I have developed an empathic connection with them at a level that borders on a discrete communicative dialog. Over the years, this family of wild horses as well as others adopted Laura and I as their human symbionts in this naturally balanced ecosystem. Lucy had clearly benefited from the treatment and her ribs were no longer showing. She ate the mix as Pixie watched and then they went back down to her family.Ībout two weeks later Lucy and Pixie returned and this time she brought her entire family up to introduce us, including their mighty family stallion, who we named ‘Black’. So we MacGyver-ed a solution by mixing some wormer (Ivermectin) with some oatmeal mix we had in the kitchen. Having a background in livestock production I had a sense of her problem.
Lucy approached Laura and I with Pixie in tow as if to ask for help. Lucy was the lead mare of a small family band that held back about 100-yards away and watched our interactions. Lucy was underweight due to an overload of gastric parasites.
Lucy was still nursing Pixie, a little roan foal with a black mane.