10/06/2026
Stormy and Laura have been with us for about three years now. Mother and son, they lived together their entire lives in this beautiful paradise with Stormy’s sister Eileen (who has since been adopted), until the family needed to sell the farm and these guys needed a mustang friendly place to land. These wild mustangs didn’t make it easy on us! It took us six months to catch them all. The first try, all three of them hopped over a 4-5 foot fence, showing no signs of their age! Then we set up an extensive bait trap. While Stormy and Eileen were lured in by the yummy snacks, their mom was wise to our tricks!! Stormy tried to jump the 6’ tall fence to get to her, rather than load on this trailer. But we got them all here, and they learned to love it here and even made new friends. Eileen went her separate way out in our big herd, and eventually found a wonderful home of her own.
Last winter, laura (30 years old and about 12 hands of tough cookie spirit) spent the whole winter out with the herd. In three feet of snow. Fluffy and fat. Trotting up nickering in the below zero weather for her grain. No blanket. Gale force winds. A total badass. Mustang spirit through and through. And Stormy did okay too 😂.
But lately, Stormy and Laura have been showing their age a lot. They’ve been slowing down. Struggling to finish their meals. Struggling with weight and muscle tone. An old injury of Stormy’s keeps flaring up and we had to take him out of the herd and put him and laura in a round pen. They’ve both tried to escape several times. Laura even managed to do it yesterday and ran several victory laps around the outside of the pen before realizing Stormy was still locked inside, and she didn’t want to go anywhere without him.
So it’s been a hard decision, but we think they’re telling us loud and clear that life in a tiny pen isn’t what they signed up for, and Stormy won’t be sound enough to go back out with the herd again. They just don’t heal like they used to at this age. So rather than worry about them all winter, we’ve decided to lay them to rest together. We’re so grateful that we’ve been able to give them a happy, fulfilling and never boring retirement. But now it’s time to do the right thing, on a nice sunny fall day. It’s currently scheduled for next Friday.
So for anyone who has been touched by these two sweet seniors, please reach out if you’d like a chance to come say goodbye.
And anyone who is able to contribute to their final costs, we would greatly appreciate that. We estimate over $2000 between euthanasia expense and burial cost for two horses, and we’d like to put together some sort of memorial here to remember them by.
