There’s nothing quite like a mini pony to bring the community together.
“Lorelei,” the small but feisty two-feet tall mini pony from Empire Hills Farm escaped and ran away from her farm on Nov. 20. Since last Wednesday afternoon, the feral rescue had been missing and on the move, with volunteers searching for her in back country areas via drone, by four wheelers, or on horseback.
On Sunday morning, Lorelei was finally caught and wrangled in by Brandon Morse, with many community members also present and at the ready to assist in any way possible.
Gretchen Knoblock, who helps to run the Empire Pony Pal program with Empire Hills Farm founder Michele Morris, said they really believe that getting the word out was key in bringing Lorelei home and finding her safe.
“Everybody was following the saga… She (Lorelei) seems to be in relatively good shape considering she was gone for almost five days,” Knoblock said. “It went down very quickly once we knew where she was. We had thousands and thousands of responses. To see this community come together like this, I’ve never seen anything like it. I think it really impacted everybody, whether they were just sitting on their sofa watching the updates or whether they were out there in the cold, in the rain, on a horse, walking the roads, on a four-wheeler, with a drone — it’s just incredible.”
On Sunday afternoon, Knoblock said they put the call out for area experienced trail riders to help in the ongoing search, hoping that the horses would draw Lorelei out as the other tactics they attempted earlier in the week did not work. About 15 people showed up, includ- ing Morse, who also stopped by to help a couple days before with another wrangler.
While the search was supposed to start at 11 a.m., Knoblock said she got a phone call around 10:30 a.m. from a nearby neighbor with sightings of Lorelei, and from there, they made their way immediately to the property near Clara Lane off Maple City Highway. People were still showing up to help during “the big chase,” but Morse and the crew managed to catch Lorelei within 20 minutes of finding her near a fence where the neighbor’s horses were.
“A lot of the riders didn’t even get saddled up yet because they had just arrived, so they made the most of it and went on a nice trail ride for themselves and met some nice people,” Knoblock said. “Apparently she had just gone into heat and was drawn to geldings (male horses) and that is another big thing that helped us… So nature kicked in to help us a little bit.”
This year, Knoblock and Morris just started another venture in addition to their Empire Pony Pals program called the Sleeping Bear Equestrian Club, which will serve as a way for area horse enthusiasts to make connections and share information. After the massive successful effort to find Lorelei, Knoblock said they will officially add a “search and rescue” committee to the club to help with any future missing efforts in the community.
Whether it’s to help find another missing horse, livestock, humans, or whatever it may be, Knoblock said the equestrian club wants to be there for the community in the same way that it was for them.
“We (the club) want to be on call for those types of missions because people just weren’t going to quit until they got Lorelei — they all felt like it was their own horse,” she said. “Especially in today’s world of our country being ripped apart with hatred and awfulness everywhere… we put aside all that crap for something that meant something to the whole community, and we need more of that in this world.”
To thank the community and volunteers for all the support in bringing Lorelei home, an open house will be held at Empire Hills Farm on Dec. 14 from noon to 3 p.m. People will be able to meet little Lorelei and the other mini ponies there, as well as tour the farm during one of the merriest times of the year.
“It’s our way of just saying thank you to the community for this unbelievable outpouring, it’s just crazy,” she said.
