Smokey's Story:
Smokey was born in 2020 and is from Indian Lakes Nevada!
He was pulled from the McLean, Texas kill pen by a group of mustang advocates as he had a home offer! Unfortunately, his home offer, and then TWO MORE home offers fell through for him, leaving him homeless.
His video in early May 2024 from the lot showed him extremely skinny and scared, but willing to quickly listen to the human's commands. In the time that he was there, he lost so much weight he was emaciated when he left the lot and headed for the quarantine facility his original bailer sent him to.
We actually were planning to fundraise to pull Smokey from the lot back when he was first posted, but he was bailed off the lot so quickly we took it as a good sign that he had gotten a good home. Unfortunately, all three of his potential homes did not come through for him in the end!
These horses have been through enough between being rounded up, sorted by the BLM, set in holding, auctioned or adopted from the pens, trained (usually in in a forceful & rough manner), and now put through the auction circuit and ultimately left in a kill pen to be shipped to Mexico to be slaughtered. Enough is ENOUGH!
In late March we happened to see a post from the person who bailed him out of the kill pen explaining how people had offered him a home and then fell off the face of the earth, so we decided to step in and offer him a sanctuary home for good with the help of Fire Horse Refuge, and awesome foundation for the good of horses! Also with their help & through this fundraiser, we were able to bail another mustang who is in the McLean TX Kill pen who came from the Indian Lakes HMA just like Smokey and transported the two to sanctuary together, for life!
They arrived home on June 18, 2024!
Even though Smokey was trained to ride, he was extremely frightened of people upon arrival. Slowly but surely we have been gaining his trust and just working on getting him where he can approach us without feeling the need to bolt away.
It blows my mind how many people “train” these mustangs without taking the care to make sure they feel safe around humans. Training is utterly useless if you can’t even walk up to the horse because they are so scared of you!! Rough and quick training does NOT work out well long term for wild horses. Be cautious of anyone you see doing it!
Now Smokey will get to choose how much human interaction he wants to have. He will not be forced to be ridden ever again!!
