JUST EQUUS

12/27/2025

It’s almost here! A powerful, transformative 2026!

11/20/2025

She trained wild horses by swimming beside them in the Rio Grande. Born in exile, Johanna July worked barefoot, lived by her own rules, and answered to no one.

Johanna was born around 1860 in Nacimiento, Mexico—a home built by the Black Seminoles, people who had escaped war and slavery. Mexico gave them what the U.S. never did: safety, land, and freedom. This is the world Johanna grew up in—a hard place, but a free one.

In 1871, her family returned to Texas to work as scouts for the U.S. Army. Her father trained horses, and Johanna quickly followed. She didn’t care for cooking or sewing. She loved the open land, the animals, and the feeling of a horse learning to trust her.

When her father died, Johanna—still a young girl—took over his work. But she refused to break horses the way men did, using fear and violence. Instead, she led wild horses into the river. As they swam and grew tired, she climbed onto their backs gently. By the time they reached the far shore, the horses trusted her. She didn’t break their spirit—she earned it.

People across South Texas knew her name. A tall, barefoot Black Seminole woman who could calm the wildest mustang.

At eighteen, Johanna married a man named Lesley. But he wanted a traditional wife, and when she struggled with housework, he became violent. One day, Johanna simply rode away on her pony and never looked back. In a time when women had almost no rights, leaving him was an act of courage.

She remarried later and built a successful life raising cattle and training horses. She stayed true to herself—still outdoors, still barefoot, still free.
Around 1910, Johanna moved to Brackettville, where she lived the rest of her life. In 1937, she told her story to the Federal Writers’ Project, giving us one of the only records of her voice.

Johanna July died in 1942 at about eighty-two years old. Her grave is simple. It doesn’t tell how she rode the river, how horses trusted her, or how she walked away from a violent marriage to save her own life.

But her story remains.

She was a woman who tamed wild horses with patience, who lived on her own terms, and who proved that real strength doesn’t come from force—it comes from freedom.

A life quiet but powerful. A spirit that never bowed. A woman impossible to forget.

11/20/2025

What is Equine Herpesvirus (EHV)?

You've probably heard it called Rhinopneumonitis, a respiratory tract disease that results in "snotty noses," but EHV is more than that. Depending on the strain, this virus can also cause abortion in broodmares, and equine herpesvirus myeloencephalopathy (EHM) — the often-deadly neurologic form of the disease.

Because EHV is endemic in many equine populations, most mature horses have developed some immunity through repeated natural infection. However, they remain a source of infection for other susceptible horses, like weaned foals and yearlings, who usually display symptoms of the respiratory form of the disease in autumn and winter. Performance and show horses are also more vulnerable to the disease, as they commingle with unfamiliar equines in close quarters while under stress from travel and competition.

Proper biosecurity protocols can help reduce EHV outbreaks and other disease transmission. A variety of vaccines are also available for protection against both the respiratory and abortive form of the disease, but there is no equine licensed vaccine at this time that has a label claim for protection against the neurologic form (EHM).

Consult your primary equine veterinarian to learn more about this disease and work with them to determine the optimal vaccine protocol for your horses.

You can learn more about all three forms on the Equine Disease Communication Center's website here: https://equinediseasecc.org/infectious-diseases

11/20/2025

A breathtaking view from the driver’s seat of history — a 40-horse team in perfect coordination. Imagine the strength, skill, and precision it took to guide this incredible lineup! 🐎💪

11/19/2025

Not only do horses speak, Animals, Plants, eveything/being speaks! We simply need to learn to connect, listen, & receive.

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. UVA engineering professor Rosalyn Berne has spent a good deal of ti...

11/19/2025

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

11/18/2025

In the winter of 1954, a 63-year-old woman from Maine got bad news.

The doctor told her she was dying — two years to live, maybe less.
He said she should sell her things, move into a charity home, and wait for the end.

Instead, Annie Wilkins bought a horse.

His name was Tarzan, a brown Morgan gelding with kind eyes and a steady step. She loaded him with supplies, packed a bedroll, and tied a small dog named Depeche Toi (“Hurry up,” in French) to the saddle.

And then, without a map, she pointed west.

She wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died.
That was the dream her mother once told her about — the land of sunshine and oranges, where winter never comes.

So Annie left her frozen farm in Minot, Maine, in November snow and started riding.

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She had no sponsors.
No GPS.
No cell phone.
Just faith — that America was still kind.

She slept in barns and on porches. Ate biscuits handed to her by strangers. Rode through blizzards, floods, and towns that had never seen a woman traveling alone on horseback.

Truckers pulled over to wave. Farmers gave her hay for Tarzan.
Police officers escorted her through busy highways so she wouldn’t be hit by cars.

In Kentucky, she was offered a job.
In Wyoming, a marriage proposal.
In California, fame.

But what Annie wanted most wasn’t fame. It was freedom.

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By the time she reached Pacific Grove, California — 4,000 miles and 18 months later — the newspapers called her “The Last of the Saddle Tramps.”

She had crossed a country that was changing faster than anyone could imagine.
From horses to highways. From open doors to locked ones.
From neighbors to strangers.

And yet, what she found — what she proved — was that kindness wasn’t gone. It was just waiting to be asked.

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When Annie finally saw the Pacific Ocean, she wept.

Not because she had beaten death.
But because she had lived — in the truest sense of the word.

She went on to write a book, Last of the Saddle Tramps.
She lived not two years, but twenty-five more, outliving every diagnosis and every doubt.

She died at nearly ninety — still believing in the goodness of people, and still remembering the sound of Tarzan’s hooves on the road to freedom.

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🐴 Why her story matters now

In a world obsessed with speed, Annie reminds us that courage doesn’t come from having everything figured out.
It comes from saddling up anyway.

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If you ever wonder whether there’s still good in this world, remember her:
A woman, a horse, and a dream.
And the road that carried them west.

10/30/2025

🐎 The Enduring Lineage of North America’s Wild Horses

For centuries, it has been said that horses went extinct in North America about 10,000 years ago and were later reintroduced by Europeans.
But modern genetic and archaeological discoveries are rewriting that story — revealing that wild horses are, in fact, a native and continuous species whose roots run deep into North American prehistory.

1. The Birthplace of the Horse

All modern Equus species — horses, donkeys, and zebras — trace their evolutionary origins to North America around 4 to 4.5 million years ago (Eisenmann & Baylac, 2000; Orlando et al., 2013).
From here, herds migrated across the Bering Land Bridge into Eurasia, giving rise to regional populations that would later become the Iberian, Steppe, and Near Eastern horses.
North America was, and remains, the cradle of equine evolution.

2. Continuity, Not Extinction

Traditional paleontological timelines claimed horses vanished from North America at the end of the Pleistocene.
However, recent radiocarbon dating and genomic work challenge this assumption:

Guthrie, 2003; Hill et al., 2018; Fisher et al., 2020 — show late-surviving Equus fossils in the continental U.S. younger than 10,000 years.

Yvette Running Horse Collin, 2017 (University of Alaska PhD) — documents Indigenous oral histories describing horses long before European arrival, implying continuity rather than disappearance.

Kuzmina et al., 2019 — found mitochondrial haplotypes in ancient Yukon horses persisting in modern samples.

These findings indicate that some horses survived regionally, adapting through climate change, while others thrived abroad.

3. Ancient DNA Reveals the Truth

Modern genomics provides the clearest evidence of continuity:

Orlando et al., Nature, 2013 – Sequenced a 700,000-year-old Yukon horse genome; results show it is the direct ancestor of all modern horses.

Weinstock et al., PLoS Biology, 2005 – Pleistocene North American horses fall within the genetic range of modern horses, not outside it.

Der Sarkissian et al., Molecular Ecology, 2015 – Demonstrated persistent gene flow across the Holarctic (North America ↔ Eurasia).

Librado et al., Cell, 2021 – Analyzed 78 ancient genomes, confirming that several extinct North American lineages contributed directly to modern domestic horses.

Together, these studies show that modern horses carry the DNA of ancient North American populations, proving biological continuity — not extinction.

4. Iberian Horses: A Sister Lineage with North American Roots

The so-called “Iberian breeds” (Andalusian, Lusitano, Sorraia) are not foreign newcomers but descendants of horses that once lived in North America.

Warmuth et al., PNAS, 2012 – Genetic modeling shows Iberian lineages diverged early from North American ancestors that migrated into Eurasia.

Olsen et al., Animal Genetics, 2014 – Identified mitochondrial haplogroups in Iberian horses matching those from late-Pleistocene Alaskan samples.

Royo et al., Animal Genetics, 2005 – Sorraia and Lusitano breeds retain primitive coat-color and DNA markers tied to Ice-Age stock.

Thus, Iberian and Mustang horses are sister branches of the same tree, both rooted in ancient North America.

5. The Modern Mustang: A Native Continuum

Genetic panels from Etalon Diagnostics, BLM/USGS studies, and independent researchers show that Mustangs carry:

Mitochondrial haplogroups B and F — identical to Ice-Age Yukon horses (Vilstrup et al., 2013).

Alleles in MC1R, ASIP, and DMRT3 matching Pleistocene sequences and ancient Iberian stock.

Distinct markers absent in many modern European breeds — suggesting unique survival of ancestral genes.

This means Mustangs are not feral domestic strays but living descendants of North America’s own Equus lineages.

6. What the Science Now Shows

> Wild horses never truly disappeared — they evolved, adapted, and endured.
Modern Mustangs represent a genetic continuum from Ice Age horses, not an introduced species.
Their presence restores an unbroken lineage that began here more than four million years ago.

As genomic evidence mounts, the scientific narrative is catching up with what nature and Indigenous knowledge have said all along:
The horse is a native North American survivor.

09/25/2025

07/17/2025

This human-horse relationship is fundamental

07/10/2025

Heartbreaking. May the children and all who were lost rest in peace. 💗🙏🌸