PORTLAND, Maine — One year after being transported more than 3,000 miles across the country, three wild mustangs rescued from a farm in Maine are "thriving" at their new home in Bend, Oregon.
The owner of SkyDog Ranch, Clare Staples, said "The Maine Three" have joined the band of wild horses and have had no problem making themselves at home.
"They are all doing so well and it's just a joy really to see them out on a ton of space and land that very much mirrors the kind of terrain they lived on in the wild," Staples said. "We wanted to give them back their happy ending to what was a very sad story."
That story begins back in the summer of 2021 when the trio of wild mustangs, along with 17 other horses, were rescued and brought to the Maine Society for the Protection of Animals in Windham. The herd, called "The Neglected 20," had experienced months of abuse and mistreatment on a farm in Springvale.
Most of the herd was adopted. A few were in such bad shape they had to be euthanized. The last of the bunch, three wild mustangs named Silver, Annie, and Phoebe—who now goes by Sienna—would need to be relocated.
"The rescue did an amazing job with trying as hard as they could with trying to gentle them and trying to transition them into a domestic situation," Staples said.
In the summer of 2022, after much preparation, the horses were loaded into a trailer and made the long journey West to their new home at SkyDog Ranch. There, they are free to roam on 9,000 acres of land for the rest of their days.
"They actually kind of connected with three other wild horses when they first turned out and they made it a little gang of six," Staples said. "Watching these animals in particular, you know, go from being so broken and so traumatized and seeing the light come back in their eyes and watch them go back to being the horses that they were born to be and being able to release them onto a lot of land, it heals my soul."
To learn more about "The Maine Three" and their new home, watch the 207 story above.