🐴👶Like any mother who lost her child for a few minutes, a few hours, or more, Venus’s happiness and relief, when we gave her back her baby, was palpable and precious.

💐 A mother’s love is not something only people understand. You can see it in the way a wild mare stands between her foal and danger… This mare, did her very best defending her newborn, but lost the fight because there were too many bachelors running around challenging her and the lead stallions of her band.

🐎 Why this happens in wild horse social dynamics is still a mystery, but we’ve encountered and witnessed this phenomenon many times. It’s the reason for many of our foal rescues over two decades, but all of our rescued foals are now healthy adults at our rescue, and some are still in the wild, thanks to our volunteer teams and the support of our donors.

💔 When Venus ran from these bachelors, she assumed her foal was following, but he was not, because he got stepped on and went down. At that point, our volunteers protected him from further harm, and through our emergency response, within no time, we had 20 volunteers helping. See our previous video of the reunion later between Venus and her foal — it was amazing.

🩵 This reunion was especially important because this year, we may only have a handful of babies born on the Salt River. So every foal matters for the future of the herd. Every mother matters. Every family matters, and is worth protecting.

🧡 When we protect wild horses, people like to say it makes them less wild. But guess what? We actually don’t care what anyone wants to call them.

🐎 Rescues in nature happen and are allowed in all sorts of wild species, including marine mammals and wild land mammals of all kinds. A horse in the wild doesn’t suffer any less than any horse in a barn, and just like owners of horses in a barn should not let them suffer, neither should we.

🌸 If you don’t want to call them wild, then just call them humanely managed. We are protecting families, mothers, babies, and the sacred bonds between them.

💖 Today, on Mother’s Day, may we remember that love does not belong to one species alone. It lives everywhere in nature — and if we are willing to see it, the wild horses show us that every day. Just look at this picture and feel it. 🌸🐎

🌷 Happy Mother’s Day to ALL mothers of all kinds and all species.
SRWHMG.

📷 Picture by SRWHMG Rick Blandford.