Friday, June 21, 2013

"Feature Friday – Ginger Kathrens – The Cloud Foundation"



Howdy Folks,
 
I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing Ginger Katherns last Wednesday for a story to be published in my column Holistic Hall of Fame, in the October issue of Natural Horse Magazine. She and everyone at the Cloud Foundation are dedicated to preserving not only the wild horses at the Pryor Mountains, but wild horses all across the country. The Cloud Foundation is named in honor of the Pryor Mountain pale palomino stallion, Cloud. Ginger first saw and filmed Cloud on May 29, 1995. He was three days old.
Cloud
Ginger had been to the Pryor Mountains to film and document the wild horses there many times over the previous fourteen months for the television show, "Marty Stauffer's Wild America." She watched and learned as the mares guided the foals with gentle discipline. She began to understand their behavior. She began to recognize their snorts, nickers, whinnies and postures. She learned the band was a family. She learned there was a pecking order within a band, and even between the bands. They leaned on, and needed each other for survival. It was those hardy, noble and majestic horses who taught her what it meant to be a wild horse.
Bolder's band at Pryor Mountain
Those wild, beautiful, full of spirit horses also taught her what true, horrible pain felt like when she witnessed her first Bureau of Land Management (BLM) brutal round-up. Tears streaming onto her camera lens, she listened to, and filmed the frantic screams of stallions, mares and foals, as bands and families were torn apart. She filmed the crashing and trampling of horses desperately trying to escape. On that day Ginger made a commitment to do whatever she could to keep those wild horses together and free.
She began documenting Cloud's life and band on film. The Pryor Mountains and the wonderful horses there have been seen by millions through her camera lens. Cloud has been rounded up three times over his 18 years. Fortunately he has always been released. Sadly his grandchildren and his daughter have recently been removed. Today there are only 125 Pryor Mountain mustangs running free, and those families are splintered and bands broken.

Ginger founded the Cloud Foundation, a non-profit which is dedicated to preventing the extinction of Cloud's herd through education and media events. The Cloud Foundation is also committed to protecting other wild herds on public lands. Cloud, his and other bands taught Ginger what it means to be a wild horse. She is dedicated to keeping them that way.
Cloud on his 17th birthday May 29,2012
To learn all about how the Cloud Foundation is working to help keep wild horses free to run wild please visit their website http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/

Join them on Facebook here- https://www.facebook.com/TheCloudFoundation 

Gitty Up ~ Dutch Henry

4 comments:

  1. I'd seen something about the Cloud Foundation on television and used to watch Marty Stouffer all the time.
    Thank you for this, Dutch.
    Patti

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    1. thanks Patti! ... Be sure to catch the whole story in the Oct issue of Natural Horse Magazine :)

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  2. Thank you for publishing this. Cloud is the reason that I began to search out ways to help the wild horses, all horses, and burros. It is within my ability to stop this alone. WE have to stand together. If you can't donate, sign petitions or write letters and make phone calls to your state senators...they are beginning to listen. We have a nation under sequester, and if we can make this point clear (while our soldiers take on the world in war theater) of the amounts of money that is wasted by the BLM each year on these roundups, it will greatly impact the future decisions made by the Appropriations Committees - who cut the checks to BLM to fund the roundups. I thank you, sir, for Ginger and Cloud brought me here. I will leave with the horse I came on. God speed!

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    1. Thanks, Jeanie for all you're doing to help our wild horses! and thanks for being a Coffee Clutcher!

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