March Monthly Highlights
Volunteer Highlight
his month’s volunteer highlight is fantastic volunteer Lauri Duke! Lauri got involved with wild horses about a year and a half ago when she and her husband were driving to Pyramid Lake. They passed the BLM’s wild horse adoption center and noticed a lot of horses in corrals. Her interest was immediately piqued and as soon as she got home, she started researching where the wild ones lived. She now says that she’s found them and it has changed her life. Lauri then ran into Corenna Vance of Wild Horse Connection while she and her husband were photographing in Lockwood, NV. Corenna suggested Lauri start documenting and the rest is history!
Lauri is a dedicated documenter on the Virginia Range. She loves getting to watch the wild horse families interact. She loves observing the behaviors of the horses especially asthe foals grow up, and watching the horses come for water. She thinks it's so interesting the way some will stand in the background and wait for their turn, no matter how long it takes. She loves to see the changes in each horse, what new horses may have come into the band, or which may have been taken by another. The aspect of being outside and hiking up a hill and finding a band of horses or several bands together is awesome and rewarding for Lauri
She says it's so much fun to photograph entire families and then go home and look them up in the database to identify them and find out who they are. It’s like a puzzle. One of the hardest parts of photographing for the database is trying to keep all the horses separate with their own families. To Lauri,o standing there quietly and watching them interactwith each other is awe-inspiring. And, in the end, the darters have the information they need to be able to locate mares that need to be vaccinated with birth control. So, what’s her favorite part? Everything!!
While she’s not documenting wild horses, Lauri has a part-time job teaching Independent Living Skills to highly functional people with learning disabilities, so she’s doing good no matter where she is! Thank you, Lauri for your dedication to helping to protect the Virginia Range horses. Your hard work is greatly appreciated!
Horse Highlight
This month an adorable filly found & photographed by Richie Asencio. It was decided the new filly is named Bunny after AWHC’s Field Reperseantive Deb Walker’s mom, who has dementia.
Deb’s mom loves the wild horses and would sit for hours watching them, even as dementia began taking her mind. Deb lives near wild horses in Gardnerville and has always wanted a wild horse named for her mom since her love for the wild ones was evident and a big part of her life. When Deb mentioned her moms love for wild horses to Richie and the ID group, Richie suggested the new little filly he found was just perfect for the name.
Tracy entered the record and when Deb was notified of the database record, she was very touched to know her mom would be remembered through this beautiful filly. She is so appreciative to Richie and Tracy for this special gift.
A picture of Bunny.