This isn't a rescue that grew into a brand. It's one family's life's work — and the story of how a horsewoman from the 1960s became one of the most vocal wild-mustang advocates in the Pacific Northwest, and eventually built the quiet, permanent sanctuary she runs today.
Susan Pohlman has been around horses — showing, riding, training — since she was a girl, because her father put her on one. He's the reason every person in this family ended up loving horses. He taught Susan to ride, took the family on long trail rides to a hole in the wall two hours out and back, and if she got bucked off breaking a new horse, he made her get up and get back on. There was no giving up — not in the saddle, and not anywhere else in life. Everything Whispering Winds is today traces back to him.
Susan and her husband, Tom, rescued their first horse together: a neglected mare. They rehabilitated her, found her a good home, and — without quite meaning to — started something that would define the rest of their lives.
After relocating to Sandy, Oregon, Susan and Tom began taking in horses in need in earnest — rehabilitating them and finding them homes. That same year, they attended their first BLM wild mustang adoption. Susan was hooked.
By 2006, demand had outpaced their finances, so they filed for nonprofit status — granted in February 2007. What followed was a period of rapid, urgent growth: the Piute herd, rescued off a truck bound for slaughter. Thirty-three Nevada Range mares from a discontinued university fertility study, arriving in the dead of winter. Sheldon wild horses pulled back from a truck already headed for the feedlot. BLM "three-strike" mustangs — horses passed over at adoption so many times they were federally classified as unadoptable.
At its peak, Whispering Winds Equine Rescue was home to roughly 80 horses, the majority of them mustangs.
For close to ten years, Susan was an outspoken, active advocate for America's wild horses — working with the Alliance of Wild Horse Advocates and other organizations to push back against roundup practices and to help place, foster, and transport horses nationally. It's a longer story, and an important one — you can read more on our Wild Horse Rescue page.
Over the years that followed, every horse who could safely be placed in a new home, was. What remained wasn't an accident — it was the hardest core of the herd: unhandled mustangs well into middle age, horses with permanent disabilities, and bonded pairs who would only thrive together. Charlie and Eddie — the product of inbreeding, taken in at 18 months old and now in their twenties — are one example. Growing numbers of horses going blind with age are another.
There was no home coming for these thirty. So Whispering Winds stopped trying to place them, and became, in practice as much as in name, a long-term sanctuary.
As the herd aged, Oregon's damp winters became harder on aging joints and old wounds. Susan and Tom relocated the sanctuary to Roby, Texas, bringing with them Carson, two Nevada Range mares, and a Sheldon mare. The dry West Texas climate has been a blessing for a herd whose median age keeps climbing.
That same December, Susan said goodbye to her father — the pillar of the family, the man who taught her to ride and instilled the passion for horses that built this entire sanctuary. He was proud of his family and made them his priority to the very end; it was Susan's privilege and honor to be his nurse in his final months. He loved this ranch and these horses, and told Susan that when he died, this was where he wanted to be. She still feels the weight of that void every day — but she knows it's only a temporary separation, and that the road he set her on, all those years ago on horseback, is the same road that led here.
Whispering Winds no longer takes in new rescues, rehabilitates for adoption, or fosters horses. We are a permanent home for the herd we already have — plus a growing number of dogs and cats who found their way to our gate and never had to leave. Every one of them has their own history. All of them get to just be animals now, for however long they have left.
"I live and breathe caring for unwanted, abused, neglected, and abandoned animals, 24/7. Regardless of whether I'm sick, injured, tired, or having a bad day — they depend on me to take care of them. There is no greater reward than watching a herd of horses, domestic and wild together, begin their morning run: ground shaking, bucking and playing, circling back around as if welcoming me back as an old friend." — Susan Pohlman, Founder & Director
We believe every animal has a right to life. We do not euthanize to control population — we allow the animals in our care to live out their lives freely, safely, and peacefully, right up until quality of life is truly gone. All donations go directly to their care. There are no administrative salaries or board fees — every cost of running this ranch is carried by volunteers.
