July 10

It looks like Serena is finally telling Soldier to do his own eelgrass snorkeling from now on. Soldier turned 3 years old on July 3rd. In the wild, mares let their foals stay as long as they can, as long as the lead stallion allows.

As a newborn, SRWHMG intervened in a battle of bachelor stallions that would have killed Soldier, when his dad Sarge was too weak from a desease called VSV. The public helped too, by joining the protective circle of volunteers around him and his mother who was doing everything she could to protect him. Soldier was injured, but he was alive, and we continued to monitor them for 3 straight days in 115 degrees.

While we normally don’t intervene in natural processes, this action was authorized because of our contract and great relationships. The action was warrented, because the desease VSV was brought into the herd from an outside source, likely domestic horsebackriders. The disease caused real havoc in the Salt River herd, but through monitoring every horse afflicted by it, we learned a lot about the disease and in the end, no horse lost its life because of it, including Soldier. There have never been any cases of VSV in the herd since. SRWHMG monitors the health of this herd on a daily basis.

Picture from our page :
“Salt River Wild Horses – Advocates” , by Patty Ranweiler. To see thousands of amazing pictures and videos of Salt River wild horses by the many photographers and volunteers, please feel free to join our community page.