All nine pairs of Alpine mares and foals from the online auction, have arrived at their rescue destinations, and we are so thankful to everyone who took in a pair, or more. Except it is all totally messed up!

This is a video from Red Feather Rescue showing mare Roulette (from Blackjack’s band) feeding her own foal, PLUS Aveline’s foal. Why? Because Aveline has Willow’s foal, and they went to Rising Star Rescue. But now Willow has no one!

This is the contractors mistake during the hurried loading. She also mixed up another pair. However, there was a perfect opportunity to fix this situation without too much effort, at arrival at Red Feather, because these mares and foals were on the same trailer.

We asked the two rescues if they could please just let all 3 pairs in the round pen to sort themselves out, before proceeding on to deliver the last pair (Aveline and Willows foal) to Rising Star Rescue.

Unfortunately they were not willing to do so, because it would have been difficult to load again, and it would have. We were told that 5 experts discussed it, and said the mares and foals were fine because they seemed calm.

We are quite disappointed that we still don’t have a happy ending for these 3 pairs.

So we have offered to pay for the transport to exchange these mares and foals so that everyone ends up with their own baby. ( the two rescues are 4 hours apart from each other.) We think that would be a great solution.

The truth is that, even while they seem calm, horses cannot express themselves in a way that most people understand. They usually just get very quiet when depressed and people tend to translate that as “content”.

Here’s the thing: After loosing her band twice in the wild, all that Willow had left in the hole wide world, was her foal, and now even that was taken from her, she is rejecting the strange foal. Aveline has seen her own mother and father shot and killed in front of her, (the pictures are on the Alpine evidence page) and has also lost several bands due to the roundups. All she had left that was hers, was her own foal. She is now nursing Willows foal, which seems fine, but its only because she is full and the foal is hungry. Meanwhile, Roulette is emaciated, and has enough love for two babies, which is cute, but she doesn’t have enough milk for two, and it is not fair to make her feed both.

We are very grateful that at least these mares and foals are in very good places, but we want to propose going the literal EXTRA MILE for them, to give them their final storybook ending!

We really hope that both of these rescues, @Rising star and Red Feather, can put themselves in these mares’ places. No one wants to trade their kid for another! These are sentient beings with deep emotional bonds and we can mend 6 broken hearts.

Red Feather Equine Sanctuary @rising star?

See the pics of the correct pairs in the comments.Thank you.