A Dryhead report from Lori! Thank you Lori!
On another one of my many trips to the DH this month I was pleasantly surprised to see Medicine Bow, who I have not seen in quite some time.
I was about halfway through the range when I saw a car pulled over to the side of the road. I met two other horse enthusiast’s who I had met two years ago while at the Center. They told me that a grullo horse had run along the road and was having a little tiff with another horse. They really could not see the other horse except that he was “palomino” colored. I got my binoculars out and discovered that it was Medicine Bow standing alongside Johnston. They did not seem to be fighting, but just then they took off and Medicine Bow went to the other side of the ridge, out of our sight. Johnston went to the top of the ridge and we could only see his head peeking over the brush.
We heard some horse noises coming from the other side of the ridge and decided to hike around to the other side to see what was going on.
As the horses came into our sight I saw that it was Fiero and Medicine Bow. We very carefully stayed a distance from them as we did not want to get in the way in case they were going to run. I hoped that they didn’t though because the ground was very rocky and there were many crevices where they could injure themselves.
I can understand how many of the horses end up injuring their legs and hooves running on this ground. As it was, they just stood there a distance from each other, and then Johnston came up over the top of the ridge. He kept his eye on both Medicine Bow and Fiero. The action had ended as quick as it had started.
We watched them for a while and then decided to hike back to our vehicles and let them “do their thing.” All three horses look great, and I wondered if any of them would get his own harem this year. Johnston has turned out to be a very handsome stallion, and beautiful too. I hoped that Medicine Bow would not get injured like he did last year fighting with other stallions. He sure is a survivor!
I said goodbye to the two horse enthusiast and made my way to the end of the range. I did not see anyone else.
On my way out of the range I saw the “Greeters” way off in the distance, again on the east side of the road. They were peacefully grazing and slipped out of sight in the gully’s and high grasses. It was amazing that I could not even see them anymore and if I had been just five minutes later I would not have seen them at all!
Somewhere out on the range I saw these mule deer as has often been the case during this winter.
I hope to get out to the range again this week and maybe I will see even more of the Dry Head horses!
The range has been getting a good amount of moisture these past few weeks and I am seeing more green grasses for the horses to graze upon. I hope this weather pattern continues for a while.
Lori
