StPhilaret the Merciful Day sighting of lost horse in Tetons

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Barbara
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StPhilaret the Merciful Day sighting of lost horse in Tetons

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Actually, no one realized that this horse was lost, as - sadly - the 6 year old mare named Valentine had been left to die in a forest near the Grand Teton National Forest outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Teton Mountain area is popular for recreational trail riding, and this was apparently a pack horse used for that purpose.

However, St Philaret the Merciful must have intervened, for Valentine was discovered by a fluke. A rescue expedition was staged to bring her out of conditions impossible to survive for a horse, let alone one already extremely sick at the outset of the staggering month and a half she managed to both recover and keep herself alive during some of the most dire winter temperatures and heaviest snowfalls :


"She was first seen mid-December, when a trail groomer was working to clear trees and pack down snow.

He knew immediately she was out of place alone in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, lost at the lower end of Fish Creek Trail.

The dark-coated mare stood out against a blanket of white snow. She was gaunt and had been pawing down the drifts, nibbling at what grass she could find.

The groomer contacted the Shoshone National Forest’s Wind River ranger station in Dubois, Wyoming, that day, Dec. 14, and U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer Dirk Chalfant heard about it the next morning. He got on the horn and soon found out the horse belonged an outfitter who’d led pack trips in the area over the fall.

“What I discovered is this horse had probably been in there for six weeks, and at a least three of those six weeks it was probably in about 5 feet of snow,” Chalfant said, “and occasionally 30 below zero.”

Six-year-old Valentine had been left in the forest at the end of a hunting trip, having fallen too ill to pack out, said BJ Hill, owner and operator of Swift Creek Outfitters and Teton Horseback Adventures.

“She got sick in there really bad,” he said. “She had all the signs of dying.”

Hill was surprised to find she hadn’t perished in the backcountry, he said, because the area supports several species of carnivores.

“She hung high up North Forth and Fish Creek, and I think that’s what saved her from the wolves,” Hill said.

It wasn’t going to be easy to get back to her. Chalfant figured she was about 6 miles down from the Continental Trail — a trail that wouldn’t normally be groomed at that point in December — on a sidehill.

The plan of the three-person search party — Chalfant, Hill and Hill’s son, Heith — was to first get some hay back to the horse. It had been six days since she’d been sighted when the team headed out. With trails ungroomed and more snow falling, they figured it was going to be hard enough to get back to her and they might need a couple of days to find a path out for her.

“I ride a brand-new 800 RMK snowmobile and it was challenging for the three of us to actually snowmobile down to where she was,” Chalfant said.

But when she spotted them she made it clear she did not want to be left behind again.

She didn’t want to spend another night back there alone,” Chalfant said. “If we had to leave her and drive away, I think she would have been heartbroken.”

A horse with heart [ "pluck" might be a better description ]

It continued to snow as the men tried to make a path for the mare, accumulating about 8 inches that day, Chalfant said. Relief came when they heard a buzzing below them, the sound of the same groomer who had spotted the horse the week before while out working.

The groomer created an initial path out, and the men worked to build a road behind him on which to lead the mare. They led her by a rope behind their snowmobiles, while Chalfant raced up and back ahead of them, packing down the snow to help her make her way through.

“That horse would walk in our tracks and break through into 5 feet of snow,” Chalfant said. “We just took the time it took. It basically took eight hours — 1 mile an hour — to lead it out.

“She never quit,” Chalfant said. “She never tied up.”

Slowly they made it to Highway 26, about 6 miles east of Togwotee Pass. After what Chalfant estimated was 20 miles of travel they finally reached the Moccasin Basin parking lot, where they loaded her up in a trailer to take her back to her winter home in Pavillion.

“To be honest with you,” Chalfant said, “when we went down there, we didn’t think we could get her out....

“To me, it was a Christmas miracle.”

http://idahostatejournal.com/outdoors/x ... f9664.html


A POWERFUL REMINDER TO NEVER GIVE UP : whether on a human or an animal which has a strong will to live.

Of course, prayer to Heaven can many times make ALL the difference in the recovery of a person or animal from stressful situations like the one described here.

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Re: StPhilaret the Merciful Day sighting of lost horse in Tetons

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The heroic mare :

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Re: StPhilaret the Merciful Day sighting of lost horse in Tetons

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This story has made it to the national news.

From pet rescue websites and other forums, people were angrily calling for suspension of BJ Hill, the outfitter who apparently left poor Valentine in the moutains.

However, more details later came to light that he and his son had made repeated attempts to return and find her. People who posted that defense of the outfitter's behavior cautioned "Don't judge before knowing all the facts !" It's a good maxim by which to live, in general.

The ABC News account includes this fact and provides a little more detail to the original story released, such as that this was not only a bear area, but a GRIZZLY BEAR habitat :


"On a 16-mile trek off a mountain, a young horse lay down — she could not go another step. The mare looked deathly ill to the men leading a train of horses out of a base camp for hunting and fishing excursions.

In a race against the weather last fall, they left behind the horse they named Valentine to get the rest of the animals down. When they went back for her the next day, she had vanished into the vast Wyoming wilderness.

Six weeks later, a worker spotted the 6-year-old mare, and her owners helped guide the healthy horse out through a storm and deep December snow. Not only is this grizzly bear country, a domesticated animal like Valentine had to find food and survive the harsh winter conditions.

She didn't even need veterinary care. But when the story spread last week in the horse-loving resort region of Jackson Hole, it unleashed a fervent debate among residents over whether the outfitting company did the right thing in leaving the horse, did all it could to find her or should have put her down to spare her suffering.

It has culminated in a state criminal investigation that aims to find out if the outfitter's actions were cruel or helped lead to what some call the miraculous survival of an animal that's iconic in the American West.

B.J. Hill, who owns Swift Creek Outfitters and the horse, said he has received angry phone calls from across the country.

"People are so quick to judge," Hill said in a telephone interview from his ranch. "Who knows what's going to happen. It's not over with yet. We're just trying to survive the moment that our horse is home."

Hill, who owns 125 horses, said Valentine is doing well and is happy. It's unclear why she got sick. But she survived on grass until the snow came, when she would paw at the powder to get the food underneath.

Jackson resident Joan Anzelmo, who has been around horses for much of her life, is among those raising questions about why Valentine was left behind and whether enough was done to find her.

"I'm a horse person, and I just despair at the thought of that animal being left out in the deep backcountry with all the risks that occur for people or for animals and in one of the toughest winters that we've had," Anzelmo said. "So, clearly, this 6-year-old mare was able to survive, and for most of us, we consider it a miracle."

It is considered humane to put down a horse that is severely injured or disabled by old age. Based on initial information that the horse was near death on the trail, Anzelmo and others say it might have been better to put down Valentine than to let her suffer alone.

Hill said the wranglers did not have firearms, but even if they did, he didn't see the sense of shooting a young horse and giving it no chance to survive.

"She was down, but she's too nice of a mare to go shoot for God's sake," he said. "She did what we figured."

Anzelmo said it is not the first choice but leaving it alone was not acceptable.

Hill, who was not on the trip, said most people don't know the whole story. He said his son went up a day later and found her gone.

He said perhaps the horse left the trail to get water. Maybe she was spooked by a grizzly bear.

Attempts to find her over the next few weeks proved fruitless, Hill said. Inevitably, the harsh winter arrived, and snow piled up by the foot.

In mid-December, a worker grooming snow trails in the Bridger-Teton National Forest spotted Valentine and called the U.S. Forest Service. Hill said he, his son and a Forest Service employee worked for about nine hours to get the mare back home, leading it out of the wild by a snowmobile.

"She was quite a ways from where she went down," Hill said. "She went way down country."

The Wyoming Board of Livestock is leading the investigation into what happened, including the reason the wranglers left her. Senior criminal investigator Ken Richardson said it will take about two weeks to complete the review, which will be given to prosecutors for a decision on charges.

Richardson said his agency has not uncovered previous criminal wrongdoing by Swift Creek Outfitters.

The company's annual permit review has consistently attained the highest rankings, which include treatment of horses, Bridger-Teton Forest district ranger Todd Stiles said."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/hors ... s-45055424


It seems that Valentine only lay down because she was TIRED. Thank God that such inhumane procedures as described above were not considered because most likely she wasn't even mildly ill !

Hopefully the story will inspire more kindness to animals across the country. There are animal rescue organizations that can be helped by volunteer work for those who want a sound cause to assist. Instead of working for a political party campaign, for example, one is contributing their efforts to a healthy and wholesome campaign.

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