December 17th

He has a little bit more to gain, but more and more he’s starting to look like the Batman we used to know. It’s been just two months and 4 days.

It’s a very specific science to nurse a horse back to health. You can’t just throw a hole bunch of food in front of him. His organs are not used to process that, and it may actually cause them to colic and die. This is referred to as refeeding syndrome and it can break a rescuers heart when a rescued horse does great for two weeks but then dies unexpectedly.

We apply a very gradual increase in nutrition and constant re-assessment. Ofcourse we fixed his teeth first and he may have had a slight bacterial infection, but he is doing fantastic now. His blood work is perfect, his spirit is bright and his personality is back. Thank you caretaking team!

Overall there was no great mysterious disease, he was simply declining because every time he ate, his mouth hurt, so he stopped doing it. This is a very sad and slow way to wither away and we just couldn’t let him die like that. We gave him every opportunity to stay wild and only rescued him once he lost his band and with that also lost his will to live.

Now that he’s so much better, it’s really too bad that we cannot release him back to the wild. We’ve received many comments on that subject and what we would like people to understand is that we do not actually make the rules.

This is a novel cooperation between State government and Federal government and an NGO (non governmental organization). It is thanks to this that we can make humane decisions, but the horses still live on Forest Service land and we are bound by Forest Service boundaries and guidelines.

Unfortunately these guidelines do not allow for a horse to return to the forest, after we’ve rescued them. This is understandable, but definately a shame in his case because he has not been tamed. We have to remember that because the Forest Service is willing to work with us, that these horses are still here in the first place. We are here to ensure this program is a success.

So we are brainstorming a plan for spring of 2022 for him to be able to live on a bit larger acreage in Prescott. The 15 acre property is owned by Simone Netherlands (long before she founded the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group.) She has a barn there where she used to rescue horses from killbuyers, then retrained them and adopted them out.

With Batman’s donations we can fence off a retired stallion section, with some Salt River friends and maybe even a girlfriend, so that he can feel like a lead stallion again.

May the new year bring lots of happiness for all of our supporters and for all wild horses everywhere. Merry Christmas Batman!