Curly Horse Rescue, Inc., in conjunction with Shiloh Acres has succeeded in pulling this fellow from a feedlot in Colorado. He has made it by the skin of his teeth, with his "ship date" to slaughter being pushed forward 24 hours at a time due to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
 
Early reports were that he appeared scared, unhandled and uncatchable. He was picked up from the feedlot last night by Amber from Shiloh Acres, who reports now
that he seems to be rather nice, not halter broke but shouldn't be far off. She is already very taken with him as he is showing his uniqueness and adapting in ways she didn't expect of a frightened horse in his situation. A HUGE Thank you go out to Cheri, Marni and Carrie, Judy V., and of course Adria and Amber, for all the work, telephone calls, and emails to get this guy saved. He has been pulled by a rescue in Colorado and is currently being fostered there.
In speaking with Amber, who picked him up yesterday and is working at evaluating him, he is working his Curly charm already and she has commented at his unusual ability to adapt despite his obvious lack of handling. She is impressed and is thinking she may keep him on for a period of time to ensure his basic handling is well established before he goes out to a permanent home. She REALLY likes him.
If you are interested in adopting this fellow, please contact Amber at 970-218-6351 amberart@aol.com
UPDATE FEBRUARY, 2007 ~ From Shiloh Acres website:
"Approx. 3 year old chestnut Bashkir Curly gelding
Approx. 15.1 hands
Saved from a slaughter feedlot with the help of donations from the public, this very unique horse has been an interesting case. At the feedlot, he acted totally wild, and was VERY unapproachable, leading us to suspect that he might not ever have had any human handling. After herding him onto our horse trailer and getting him home, he settled down enough that I was able to coax him with cookies into letting me touch his face and eventually work my way down his neck. I got a halter on him with a little more work...and what do you know? He is halterbroke and pretty tame, though a bit shy still at times. He is a very intelligent horse, and you can tell just from his body language and the look on his face that he is constantly thinking everything through. We are hanging on to him a bit longer to work more with him, but so far he is doing very well.
Update February 18th, 2007: I am heartbroken to report that we had to euthanize Phinn after he suffered a bad accident on January 14th... The story of his accident was posted here for a little while, and we had high hopes of him coming through his ordeal just fine. To recap the event, he somehow got his left front leg caught up in the top hinge of a gate (probably while rearing up to play with the horses across the fence) and was left lying on the frozen ground, hanging from his leg, for many hours until I found him at morning feeding time. While he appeared to be ok after getting him untangled and to his feet, it became apparent after about 24 hours that his front leg was NOT ok. The pressure placed on his leg while it was caught in the gate hinge cut off the circulation from about mid-cannon bone down, and that combined with the night's cold temperature caused his lower leg to completely freeze solid, killing off flesh and bone. We took him in to the Countryside Large Animal Veterinary Hospital of Greeley to see if there was any hope for saving his frozen limb, but sadly there was nothing to be done. We did research the possibility of a prosthetic limb, but the cost and stress of such a procedure (plus the question of quality of life for the animal) proved to be too great. Thus the hard decision of putting Phinn down was made.
It was a horribly tragic ending to such a young, promising horse. We will miss him greatly.
CLICK HERE for Happy Endings
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