“This is Ember. She is a Warm Springs, Oregon, HMA BLM wild mustang. I picked her up earlier this year after seeing a picture of this red, oddly built horse. Come to find out, she is not ‘oddly built’ but has some strong apparent Morgan influence—a breed I am not familiar with—and had so much muscle atrophy from sitting unwanted in the BLM corrals for TWO years. She has since regained much of her lost weight and is filling out nicely.

But how has she been therapeutic for me? I am a registered nurse. A nurse who once lived for even the opportunity to just brush a horse. It gave me so much emotional satisfaction being around them. I, along with much of America, have been socially isolated trying to keep others safe from whatever exposures I may have encountered while at work. It has been nothing less than depressing. 

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I had lost all ambitions to do anything. Watching my kids with their horses used to be more than enough to fill my heart with joy. Before Ember, I was having to force myself to take them to the barn so at least they could fill their hearts with something that was keeping them going and gave them something to look forward to. I had lost that for myself. 

So, after seeing this horse who was 600 miles away, I knew there was something special about her—that she needed me as much as I needed her. It was a two-day trip of 1200 miles to get her home. When this tall (16.1hh!), scared, red, thin, wild, nameless horse jumped out of the trailer I said to myself, ‘What am I doing?!’ I have never owned a mustang. It was less than two days and our bond went from one I had fantasized about from online pictures to reality. She went from a wild-eyed, terrified, giant animal to one that when I ran my hand down her nose would close her eyes and turn to mush from the peace it brought her and myself. 

She became my Ember. She reignited my passion for horses and gave me my own reason to get up and out of the house, as visiting with friends/family is less of an option. She is the piece of burning coal that looked like it was about to be extinguished as her own fire was dwindling inside her dull sad eyes. But instead, she was transported from one place to another and able to start a new fire: mine. Now we burn together. We are blazing along in our own journey… together.” —Nancy L. 

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