Auction ensures rare Ojibway horses will have homes

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This article was published 14/10/2017 (3149 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GRUNTHAL — In a packed auction ring with more than 200 people bidding on horses, Louise May kept flashing a white piece of paper.

Up for bid was the distress sale of 23 rare horses, mostly Ojibway horses — an endangered breed imported 500 years ago by Spanish conquistadors and later adopted by northern Ojibway people.

Only 200 of the horses are believed to exist. The 23 horses suddenly come up for auction in a messy court-ordered divorce settlement.

On two days noticed, May rounded up 10 investors to pool their resources and hopefully rescue from five to seven of the horses for her Aurora Farm in St. Norbert.

“At this point, it’s just about saving them,” May said heading into the auction.

The first one she grabbed, after back-and-forth bidding war with a man in a white hat, was a one-year-old filly for $800, the highest sale of the day to that point. Next, she aggressively outbid all challengers for a cross-bred mare named Raven for $900. A third horse, a filly, was secured for $550.

By the time the sale ended, May had secured her seven horses, including four breeding Ojibway mares, formally called Lac La Croix, that she said will help ensure against the breed becoming extinct.

She was beaming. “We all recognize how important this is,” she said.

Rhonda Snow, the owner forced to auction off half her herd of the rare breed, expressed relief. When May approached Snow 90 minutes before the horses went to auction and told her the plan, an emotional Snow wrapped her arms around the stranger and hugged her hard.

“They’re wonderful people,” she said afterward.

The forced sale was devastating for her. She started with four rescue horses 12 years ago on her Manitou Mistatim Ranch near Fort Frances in northwestern Ontario, and had built her herd up to about 45.

“I am writing this from my broken heart… and with tears for my babies,” wrote Snow — who is Ojibway on her father’s side — on Facebook.

In desperation, she posted the sale on social media late in the week for fear the rare horses could wind up on the meat market. The horses were probably never meant for the meat market because there just isn’t enough meat on them — they’re small, like Icelandic ponies. But Snow was panicked.

The posting went viral. “It just blew up,” said Snow’s friend, Cheryle Wolff.

“This is a last resort of what she never wanted to do. She was backed into a corner because of the divorce,” said Wolff.

Interest in the sale went far beyond the local market and all the way to Florida, as well as Toronto and British Columbia. A buyer representing the woman from Florida was the winning bidder on three or four horses.

Skylynn Sigurdson from Gimli, a former assistant trainer of racehorses at Assiniboine Downs, also secured one of the horses. Sigurdson traces her lineage to Peguis First Nation, and said there was a spiritual element to her desire to own one of the horses.

Elwood Quinn, livestock co-ordinator with Rare Canada Breeds, could not be reached after the sale. But earlier, he expressed fears the auction could mean “the last nail in the coffin” for the endangered breed. “It’s disgusting,” he said.

Indigenous people favoured the horse because it is so quiet, he said. “They were the stealthiest little animal. That was their forte. They could move anywhere silently,” including into an enemy camp.

Quinn maintained there is documented history that the United States military tried to kill off the breed because it was viewed as part of the arsenal of native peoples. Snow said indigenous people also favoured the horse for its ability to survive in the woods.

Snow has won awards from Rare Breeds Canada for rescuing Ojibway ponies.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca