Reno Gazette Journal
Bidding tops $6,500 for 15year-old wild horse Sarge
Mark Robison, mrobison@rgj.com 4:19 p.m. PST November 2, 2015
(Photo: BLM)
Bidding has reached unprecedented heights for a battered old horse
at the National Wild Horse and Burro Center at Palomino Valley, just
north of Reno.
As of this writing, bidding for the 15-year-old stud stallion stands at
$6,530, based on 467 bids. The online auction ends Tuesday
morning.
“I believe this is precedent setting,” said Jason Lutterman of the
Bureau of Land Management. “That’s far more than most ungentled,
untrained wild horses go for in our adoptions.” He said such horses
usually sell at auction for a couple of hundred dollars.
Neda DeMayo, founder of the California wild horse sanctuary Return
to Freedom, said she’s “never” seen the bid for such a horse go so
high. “It’s my personal opinion that (the high bidding) is political, it’s
about people who are angry at advocates and people trying to make
a point and maybe use Sarge as some sort of message,” she said.
DeMayo said she did not want to get into the drama surrounding
Sarge but it was her understanding that there was conflict between
local ranchers, wild horse advocates and the BLM after Sarge was
taken off the range in poor health.
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“I was there when he first came to the Palomino Valley corrals,”
Lutterman said. “He was pretty beat up. He was beat up more than
most of the horses we see, lot of scars and injuries on his body.”
He said a vet cleaned him up and Sarge is healthy now.
Lutterman said social media was driving interest in the auction. “He’s
had a lot of visitors come and take pictures of him and got to know
him,” he said. “The attention he’s gotten has spawned a lot of
emotions and they want to get to that horse.”
Donna Spano of Wallkill, New York, was the high bidder for Sarge at
one point.She heard about him online.“I saw how beat down he was
and that’s when my heart went out,” she said. “I have horses and
cows here, I’ll take him in.” She has since been out bid but said, “I’m
not out yet.”
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Anne Marie Yow has a GoFundMe crowdfunding page to raise
money to bid on Sarge. So far, she’s raised more than $6,600.
Return to Freedom, with the help of a contributor, bid on Sarge early
on, but the bidding soon went higher than the limit it was able to pay.
DeMayo said that whoever wins the auction, her 2,000-acre
sanctuary is willing to take Sarge. Return to Freedom has one of his
mares and a filly, she said. She would like to see Sarge reunited with
them. “I was trying to give him a home back in April because his mare
was not going back on the range,” DeMayo said. “We try to keep
horses in their naturally bonded groups so they can live out life with
respect. These horses are bonded and they suffer when they are
ripped apart from the horses they have chosen to be with. The
sanctuary is a place for the horses to live as natural a life as possible.”