What Do Madeleine Pickens and Fran Jurga Have in Common?

Think about it....

Blond hair? (No, that was a salon mistake last summer.)

Billionaire husband? (No...but I keep hoping.)

Born in Iraq? (No...I'm a New Englander, through and through.)

What's left?

Answer: We both have blogs!

Wild horse benefactor Madeleine Pickens has had so many inquiries and responses and requests for more information since news of her plan to rescue the wild horses in holding pens out west, that she created a blog, not too different from this one.

You can leave her comments, read updates, and follow her press path through the process of creating what may turn out to be the planet's largest single-species wildlife sanctuary.

Click here to visit Madeleine's new blog. You can click on the RSS or Atom link in the address bar to subscribe to her feed.

And then click here to listen to a recent radio interview with Madeleine that has more information about her plans.

Photo of Madeleine Pickens from her new blog.

Meet Madeleine: Equine Rescue on the Grandest Scale Makes Her ABC's Person of the Week

I wanted to turn the television off this week. Enough, enough with the bad news about the economy. But one story kept me hanging in there, through the disgust over Detroit CEOs in their private jets, through the forgiveness shown to Joe Lieberman, through the news (you call this news?) of Madonna's divorce and another Rosie spat.

Madeleine Pickens wanted to save all the wild horses in the BLM's holding pens, I reported earlier this week.

In just a few days, that headline morphed into a real possibility. The BLM is now seeking funds from Congress to cancel the mass execution of the unwanted mustangs and instead keep them housed until Madeleine's million-acre sanctuary can be ready.

The New York Times congratulated Madeleine this week in a rare editorial. Today, ABC News made her "person of the week". I suggest the media drops her sub-title ("wife of....") and show this long-time Thoroughbred breeder and animal advocate the respect she deserves.

Thank you, Madeleine!

Brumbies Steal the Show at Australia's Equitana Asia-Pacific

Written by Fran Jurga | 19 November 2008 | The Jurga Report at EquiSearch.com


As the curtain rose today on the Equitana Asia-Pacific exhibition in Melbourne, Victoria, Australian horse lovers must have breathed a sigh of relief. Just a year ago, the blockbuster event had to be canceled as Equine Influenza (EI) swept through the neighboring state of New South Wales and, further north, through Queensland.

As thousands of horses sniffled and coughed, racetracks shut down, rodeos and shows were canceled. All horse transport stopped. You couldn't even trailer your horse to a trainer or ship a mare to be bred. It was the first time the highly-contagious disease had been known in Australia. It gripped the nation's equine economy by the throat and held on for six months. At one point, there were doubts that Australian horses and riders would be allowed to compete at the 2008 Olympics. It was a dark time.

Equitana was one of the many events canceled but it was re-scheudled for this year. This huge festival of horsedom includes exhibitions, a giant trade show, clinics, nightly circus-like performing horse acts, and the creation of a re-united tribe, for a few days anyway, that is relaxing and enjoying the shows.

How would you choose between clinics by Australia's Olympic eventer Clayton Fredericks, the USA's natural horse-couple of Pat and Linda Parelli, or the Danish dressage rider Andreas Helgstrand? Tough one.

I know one clinic I wouldn't want to miss. Greg Powell is the man from snowy river, himself, a brumby (Australian for wild horse) expert who has been active to save the wild horses of the New South Wales mountain ranges. Greg has been working with a program called Youth Off the Streets that involves troubled kids in the training of brumbies. I think I would make time to listen to anyone who says things like:

"As a society we (should be) embarrassed about what we've done to our wild horses," he said yesterday in an interview with The Age newspaper as he prepped his crew of brumbies for his Equitana show. "The street kids get swept under the carpet in the same way." They say that three months out with the brumbies is worth five years of counseling and therapy.

Madeleine Pickens, are you reading this? (See Monday's post on this blog about Texas equine activist Ms. Pickens, who is working to "adopt" the 30,000 or so wild horses currently penned by the US government; she's going to need some helpers when and if her plan succeeds.)

Click here to read the rest of the article in The Age about Greg, or click here to go to his web site.

And call me if you can tell me how he got four wild horses to pose for that picture.

Madeleine Pickens Rides to the Rescue of US Wild Horses

I was reading a story in the Washington Post this morning about the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the crisis facing their management (or containment, anyway) of feral horses in the western states. I'm trying to understand this important issue facing horse welfare in our country.

The government has threatened that euthanasia is the Final Solution to the crisis in their pens out west.

About a third of the way through the story, I was sure I was dreaming when I read that horse-lover Madeleine Pickens, wife of bazillionaire energy-evangelist and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens, was planning to take all those wild horses off the BLM's hands. The Post reported that she is shopping for a suitable real estate package for the horses.

Ms. Pickens was a vocal opponent of horse slaughter in the state of Texas and helped to close the plant outside Dallas. After Hurricane Katrina, the Pickens took matters into their own hands to rescue animals and people, donating $7 million and circumventing FEMA with a Continental Airlines airlift of 800 pets out of the disaster zone.

The problem that motivated Ms. Pickens, who also owns racehorses such as the now-retired star Rock Hard Ten, is a law that allows the BLM to euthanize a horse that is older than 10 and has failed to be adopted after three tries.

Organizations, including the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), are promoting contraceptive intervention as a possible aid in stabilizing the increasing wild horse population. Watch this blog for more details on the HSUS work in this area, as well as the Pickens Plan.