Visiting Florida Wild Horse Rescue in 2011
In the years leading up to 2011 I was following all the information about the federal round-ups of the mustangs. Many ugly stories and footage from the captures were available online and I decided to travel to US and find a way to get engaged.
It was not possible for me at the time to buy up families of horses and sponsor a free, protected life for them, even though this is what I would wish to do. Also, non-Americans citizens are not allowed by the law to buy any of the mustangs. Instead I got in contact with the WILD HORSE Rescue Center in Florida and founder Diane Delano to see if there was any way I could help out in the US.
Read more about Diane and her amazing work for the wild horses on this link:http://www.wildhorserescuecenter.org
Diane was also very aware of the low possibility for a good horse life for the mustangs sold directly after the captures in auctions. Diane and I both knew that we would have very little chance of stopping or preventing more round-ups or captures, so we would instead focus on, if possible, helping the already captured horses to better lives than rodeo horses or slaughter horses.
I travelled to Florida and I donated one month of my time, offering to train 6 newly captured horses for 4 weeks and making them easy to handle and ride for any new owner - and thereby hoping to help them finding better homes.
See the video (Episode 1) from the BLM auction in 2011 and the first training of 6 newly captured horses, hoping to help them finding better homes than many other mustangs. This video is in Danish, but will still show the BLM auction and the first meeting with the horses. It is my goal to have all the video material from this trip edited and with English subtitles published in 2024. Much to learn from this material.
I arrived just shortly before an upcoming BLM auction and and my offer was announced in the speakers before the auction began. That, if one or more buyers on this auction was interested, I would bring 6 horses to the rescue center and work with them intensively for 4 weeks. Yes, it would still be a whole new life for the horses and still heartbreaking to separate them from their herd and family - but at least a better alternative than the sad fates of many other mustangs.
Many of the buyers in the auction were interested in my offer and I picked 6 strong, healthy horses to bring back to the rescue center with me and the training of them began next morning.
With me on this trip I had a professional photographer and filmmaker and our aim was initially to make a documentary about the US mustangs. Both telling the story of the wild horses and showing how well structured the natural herds really are. But also telling the story about the ugly captures and auctions - and lastly 'getting close' to some newly captured horses by following my training of the 6 mustangs.
Coming back to Denmark later on, I had hundreds of hours high quality filming of all the above mentioned. We literally filmed many hours every day of the full 4 weeks and it is a very thorough and informative video material we ended up having. And with many very special moments with the horses.
Looking at the material now, I also see that this material better than any other material I can create or even imagine, very clearly shows my WHC method in detail. My method is based on years of close observations of wild herds of horses and working with these natural wild horses, makes their authentic 'horse language' very visible and clear. In all the footage every horse is following same pattern in the training and all horses are showing a very visually clear behavior, showing exactly how far we are in the process.
Editing and clipping all the video material is quite a lot of work long and also an expensive process, so I haven't been able to do it yet. But it is my hope and my goal in 2024 to finally find time and resources to edit the material and to publish it on my Youtube channel. I promise it will be worth watching! I will let you know in this newsletter when the videos are ready.
