Starving and weak, the wild foal was a pitiful sight as she lay forlornly beside her dead mother’s body in a remote valley on unforgiving Exmoor.
Just four weeks old, she tried in vain to wake her mother, sniffing at her, and even desperately attempting to suckle.
Starving and weak, the wild foal (pictured) was a pitiful sight as she lay forlornly beside her dead mother’s body in a remote valley on unforgiving Exmoor
Suddenly, they spotted the dead mare and her buckskin-coloured foal among the undergrowth.
Dawn Westcott (pictured with the foal 11 weeks later) was en route with ten others on a guided trek to visit the ruins of Hoar Oak Cottage, an old shepherd’s shelter that has no water or electricity supply
Dawn (pictured), a horse expert who has written equestrian books with titles such as Wild Pony Whispering, said: ‘The chances of us being in that place at the right time were incredible. It was almost as if the mare had deliberately done her best before she died to get to the only spot where her foal was likely to be discovered.’
It is thought the foal’s (pictured) mother had died after becoming tangled in a 4ft-high rusty wire fence — cutting herself and possibly contracting tetanus
‘The poor little thing was very thin and her ribs were showing,’ said Dawn, who runs the Exmoor Pony Project and credits her ‘pony whispering’ skills — patient handling — for having rescued other horses from the moor.
The foal, nicknamed Lady Luna was taken back to Dawn’s farm in Somerset where she was nursed back to health
Two of Dawn’s own horses, Monsieur Chapeau and Monty, sniffed noses with her over a gate and stayed close as ‘babysitters’ until dawn.
Now, 11 weeks after her rescue, she is thriving at Dawn’s farm near Minehead, Somerset, on the edge of Exmoor. She is even suckling from an eight-year-old mare