“He made a long trip to get to his new home,” she said.
“He made a long trip to get to his new home,” she said.
Cowboy was located in California and then travelled by trailer to Nevada, then to Oklahoma, and Illinois, until he finally made his last stop in New York to meet his new family.
Gutheinz found Cowboy, now 4 years old, through an online adoption-auction ran by the Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program, which operates under the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management. The adoption program hosts online and live adoptions throughout the country.
Gutheinz said she had heard about the program when she was only 13 years old, but knew that she would have to wait until she was at least 18 by the qualification standard. Even after she was on her own after high school and college, she was living in an apartment that wouldn’t allow her to keep a horse ,for obvious reasons.
Now, Stacy and her husband Paul live in a home they built two years ago with a pasture on their property that their two other horses Ice, 10, and Onion, 9, enjoy daily. Stacy started to tell her husband about her dream to adopt a wild horse many years ago. He mostly thought she was kidding, although her persistence to talk about it made him realize that she had great passion for this program.
“After he realized I was serious, we built a new corral,” Stacy said.
Another qualification under the adoption program is that the adopter has a corral at a minimum height of 6-feet so that the wild horse can stay secluded for its first few weeks in a new environment.
When it came time to make the best adoption bid for Cowboy, she said that there was nothing that would stand in the way of getting the mustang that caught her eye. Like the live adoptions that are first-come-first-serve and a flat rate of $125, the online adoption-auction starts at $125 and bidders can raise by $5 increments.
Wild horses 3 years old are $125 for adoption and through the buddy program, adopters can adopt a companion horse for $25.
Eager to lock in the adoption of Cowboy, Gutheinz couldn’t believe her luck when a person in Florida was bidding on her mustang also. The two were raising $5 over each other until Gutheinz decided to stake the maximum bid for that adoption-auction.
“I bid the max of $400,” she said. “I wasn’t going to risk losing him over $5.”
She said that the other bidder must have realized that she really wanted this horse since no more efforts were made on his part.
Nothing can describe the feeling that she had when she finally brought Cowboy home because she had waited a long time to adopt a wild horse.
“His first day home, he didn’t want to have anything to do with me,” she said.
In the wild, these horses are habitually afraid of humans and new environments because they have never known any other way of life, said Terry B. Lewis, chief of the Bureau of Land Management Office of External Affairs. For this reason, Lewis said wild horses are suggested to be put in a secluded corral that defines a safe place and a barrier from escape until they become accustomed to their new herd, humans.
Because Gutheinz has cared for and trained horses, she knew about the health and nutrition that Cowboy would need. However, wild horses are not accustomed to oats, the general horse feed, because they live on such bare lands at certain times of the year, Lewis said.
On her second day with Cowboy, she was excited to find that their new bond was already beginning to form.
“On the second day he came up behind me and smelled my back,” Gutheinz said.
Lewis of the adoption program suggests that you let the wild horse approach you first rather than reaching out to touch them because it may frighten them or make them feel threatened.
After eight months of visits to his corral, feeding him good food and walking him in the pasture, Gutheinz said that Cowboy is like any other horse she has ever known.
“I think he forgot he was ever a wild horse,” she said.
His new herd with Stacy, Paul and their son Caleb, 6, has made Cowboy so much more adapted that he looks as if he is “best friends” with Ice and Onion.
“Those three are inseparable,” she said.
Although their trio of horses has been happy thus far, the Butheinz family wants to give another horse a chance at a new life by going to the Eastern States Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Aug. 21 and Aug. 22 in Ithaca. The family is sure they want another mustang.
“I learned a lot from Cowboy and he learned a lot from me,” Stacy said.
Why Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program comes to New York
Geographic and demographic analysis recently conducted by the Bureau of Land Management has identified Upstate New York as a strong market for the Ithaca, New York Wild Horse and Burro adoption event. The number of adopters per square mile in this area is higher than average and the number of farms with domestic horses and ponies per square mile is also higher than average.
Founded in 1973 after the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act in 1971, the Bureau of Land Management became the managing agency responsible for protecting the wild burros and their habitat. The agency along with the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service have since had the authority to manage, protect and control wild horses and burros on the nation’s public lands in order to ensure healthy herds and healthy rangelands.
The land managed under these departments includes 258 million acres within 12 western states, including Alaska. There are an estimated 30,000 wild horses roaming the millions of acres operated under the Bureau of Land Management. There is an average of 6,000 wild horses reproduced into the population each year which puts a strain on natural resources the wild horses depend on to survive. To date, more than 200,000 adoptions have been made possible.
In order to maintain their population at a level that their pasture habitat can support, Bureau of Land Management continues its population control by rounding them up and offering them up for adoption.
Federal protection and a lack of natural predators have resulted in thriving wild horse and burro populations that increase each year.
Adoption event details:
A preview will be held from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday Aug. 21 and adoptions will take place from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Saturday Aug. 22 at the Cornell University Oxley Equestrian Center, 220 Pine Tree Road, Ithaca. Adoptions are first-come and first-serve basis. The adoption fee is $125 and a companion adoption of the same animal initially adopted is only $25. For more information visit wildhorseandburro.blm.gov.
Adoption requirements:
Be at least 18 years of age
Have no prior convictions of inhumane treatment of animals or violation of the Wild Free-Roaming horses and Burros Act
Have adequate feed, water and facilities to provide humane care for the number of animals requested
A sturdy corral at the minimum of 20-foot-by-20-foot and 6-feet high
Shelter attached to corral
Provide stock-type or step-up trailer for transportation of horse, side-by-side trailers and ramps are not allowed
