‘A Morning with Mustangs’ returns Saturday

The third year of an event designed to be both fun and educational will take place Saturday at the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center east of Lovell.

A Morning with Mustangs will be held on Saturday morning, Sept. 13, at the Wild Mustang Center, 1106 Road 12. The event promises to be “a fun morning with wild horses, free refreshments and games for kids,” a promotional poster states.

The fun begins at 9 a.m. with attendees invited to meet Whisper, a “miracle mustang,” and the other wild horses living in a pasture at the Center. Kids will be able to walk the Wild Horse Trail and win prizes.

Treats from the Lovell area will be offered including Pizza Factory cookies, Laura Aagard bagels and Queen Bee candy. The center will be giving away Whisper stickers and magnets.

From 10:15 a.m. to 11:15 a.m., the keynote speaker, Chad Hanson, will present a talk about wild horses in the region.

Hanson is a professor of sociology and religion at Casper College and is the co-founder and director of the Wyoming Mustang Institute, which works to ensure healthy and stable wild horse populations on public lands through research, media outreach, education and informational events, promotional literature states.

A book signing and conversation with Hanson will follow from 11:15 to noon, during which he will sign his new book, “The Wild Horse Effect.” The book will be available for purchase Saturday for half off in honor of the annual celebration, selling for $14.98.

“Chad was here the first year (of A Morning With Mustangs), and he came and did a presentation,” Cerroni said. “He quite accidentally discovered wild horses in Wyoming, and they just captured his heart. … He’s just taken these photographs and combined it with beautiful words and quotes. And he has a nice PowerPoint presentation.”

The A Morning With Mustangs event is a fun and informal event for families whether they are horse lovers or are interested in seeing and learning about wild horses for the first time, Mustang Center director Nancy Cerroni said.

“It’s an end-of-the-summer celebration,” Cerroni said. “We’ve just basically been finishing up with our busy tour season, and it’s a way for us to give a little something back to the community. And we love to celebrate Whisper, our little Mustang that was an orphan, and she’ll be coming down (from the Cerroni place), and people can meet her.”

Whisper was born on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range on September 26, 2022, and her mother died when she was just a few months old, Cerroni said.

“She was born in the lower Sykes area, and her mother was old,” Cerroni noted. “She was an older mare, Cecilia, and not very healthy from the time Whisper was born, and then in January we discovered that Cecilia had died, and Whisper was running with the band stallion Sundance.”

 As a very young horse trying to survive in January, Whisper was in rough shape, thin and malnourished, and her chances of survival in the wild were slim, Cerroni said, but the Bureau of Land Management helped save her life.

“We informed the BLM (of Whisper’s prospects), and the BLM was able to capture her and bring her to our house, and we’ve adopted her since then,” Cerroni said.

Steve and Nancy Cerroni nursed Whisper back to health, and now she’s a spry 3-year-old.

“She lives at our place, but then she comes down here on this day each year,” Nancy said. “She’ll be 3 years old September 26, and she’s kind of a sassy little girl, but she’s a sweetheart.”