Coffee Clutch with Dutch Henry: "Feature Friday – Ginger Kathrens

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:

PatriciaJune 21, 2013 at 4:03 PM
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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UnknownJune 22, 2013 at 9:24 PM
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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Welcome to the Coffee Clutch, a happy place to visit. I write uplifting stories about a wide variety of subjects from horses to birds and nature, to love and family and friends. Sometimes I'll post excerpts from stories I've written for Equine Publications. Sometimes I'll post about writing itself. Coffee Clutch got its name because I often write while enjoying my morning coffee in the barn with my mare Kessy, and all our critters. Join us here for fun conversation and stories I promise will make you feel good.

It's For The Horses

This is not a book about riding, or training horses. It is a book on my thoughts, ideas and suggestions on how folks might find the joy in doing things for the horse, with the horses’ point of view as the leading guide. My hope is to help as many people as possible learn to hear the horse, feel their spirit, and in that way help horses everywhere. Over the years I’ve met and worked with remarkable people and horses who taught me about their feelings, their joys, their sadness, and their spirit. As a horse advocate everything I do is from the horse’s perspective, including this little book. Every story, idea, suggestion and thought on these pages will be to suggest and share thoughts and ideas on how to maximize a relationship between horse and human—from the horse’s point of view.

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The only man ever to offer Tom respect is Red Cloud. The only woman to give him love is Red Cloud’s granddaughter. Struggling with his own personal demons, Tom finds himself wedged between honoring that friendship and staying true to the depths of his conscience. Amid a backdrop of tumultuous social upheaval, he finds nothing prepared him, the woman he loves or Chief Red Cloud, for the changes about to thunder into their lives, sweeping them helplessly into the tides of human conflict and historical drama. Available on Amazon.

From The Banks OF Little Bear Creek

The Tom Named by Horse Saga continues. Three years after the death of Tall Dog, Tom Named By Horse and Soft Cloud have turned the little soddy, the lands granted them by Red Cloud, and the lean-to barn into a thriving horse ranch, fulfilling Tom’s dream. The Plains Indians Wars, or Red Cloud’s war, is mostly behind them, and the lands have had their transformation as Red Cloud’s vision had warned years earlier. Trailing horses from the ranch to Denver city has become an annual event for Tom, Buck and the rest, and this is the story of that trail. In the spirit of a good old John Wayne movie, vengeance, cattle and horse thieves, a dirty sheriff and corrupt mayor, and a wedding make this year’s drive a ride you’ll want to tag along on.