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By Ellen Bartos, on March 22nd, 2011
 Ok, folks, it’s time for another round of commenting on BLM policy, which they will completely ignore. So discouraging, but at least more people are becoming aware of how this corrupt agency is squandering our tax dollars. The film “A Nation Betrayed” premiered in LA and hopefully will be shown in many venues across the country.
USA: Submit Comments on Wild Horse Management Reform!
BLM Proposal for New Wild Horse & Burro Management Strategy
Sponsor: Bureau of Land Management
Action Needed: Please use the email below to express your concerns about the treatment of our nation’s wild herds to BLM Director Bob Abbey.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is asking for comments by March 30, 2011, on a plan that it views as a “new direction” for wild horse management.
After reviewing the proposed plan, we have serious concerns. The BLM’s “strategy” continues to focus on the removal of wild horses from public lands, rather than restoring the acreage that should be theirs, and fails to adequately address a host of other important elements. These include a clearer outline of what the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) should be studying in the next two years in order to give Congress and the BLM accurate information on what issues pose the most immediate challenges for wild horses.
via ASPCA | Advocacy Center.
By Ellen Bartos, on March 4th, 2011
 I feel fortunate to have had the privilege of knowing Percy Fuller. Although we are relative newcomers to Westhampton (we’ve only been here eleven years!) he was a familiar sight driving his team of mares past our house, and I often saw him when I was riding in the arena at Carolyn’s barn. He always had a quip or a compliment, and my husband and I both admired him tremendously as a horseman and a wonderful neighbor. The following is the article published in the Gazette. We will miss you, Percy. Happy Trails.
WESTHAMPTON – Percy Fuller, a man whose talents training horses and young riders were legendary up and down the Pioneer Valley, died in Northampton on Tuesday. He was 88.
On Wednesday, family and friends remembered Fuller as a “true-blue horseman,” whose gift for training, breeding and showing horses was matched only by his passion for teaching generations of young riders and pairing them with prospective horses.
“He was a true horseman through and through. I think he really loved working with horses, he loved making horses available to people,” his daughter, Carolyn Fuller Coggins, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “He was a character. People enjoyed him because he had a lot of charm. They liked being around him.”
via ‘True-blue horseman’ Percy Fuller of Westhampton dies at age 88 | GazetteNET.
By Ellen Bartos, on March 2nd, 2011
 The days are getting longer, but the weather still holds us hostage as if it were midwinter. In our icy section of New England, my ponies haven’t ventured out into their pasture in months, keeping to their well-trampled paddock for safety’s sake. Who wants to crunch through several frozen layers of snow and ice, risking scraped legs at best and strained tendons (or a fall!) as a likely scenario?
I think I will get Teddy a horse ball, as he always likes to keep occupied and he’s probably getting bored listening to old Magic tell the same stories over and over. ( Oh come on, man, you told me that one back in December!) I want to get him a large one, as I’ve seen some wonderful videos of horses playing soccer with themselves with giant exercise balls, but I’d better get one with a handle he can chew, otherwise he’ll be biting right into the ball itself—he has a tendency to explore everything with his big curious lips, and then seeing how much it can withstand a bit of chewing.
It’s hard to stay upbeat when I know the trails won’t be clear for riding until July, at this rate. But there has been some good news on the Mustang front. There have been some postponements of planned “gathers’ (read, inhumane unnecessary horribly expensive cruel roundups) and the glimmerings of successful legal action against the BLM. The BLM is asking for 46 million dollars for their next year’s budget, with almost half of that amount going to keep wild horses penned, unhealthy and unhappy. 40,000 horses in captivity untl they die, all funded with taxpayer money! You can take action against this by going to http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6931/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5798
as Congress will be voting on the BLM budget today and tomorrow. They won’t even let Madeleine Pickens keep some of the captured mustangs on land SHE OWNS in the Antelope area, which she bought specifically to make a sanctuary for horses. How absurd that they are deciding that there is not enough forage on her land for horses!
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