TV MOVIE RIDES TO THE RESCUE
Mare’s sad tale mirrors Horses of Mcbride
It’s a TV movie based on a true story about the race to save two abandoned, starving horses in the mountains of British Columbia.
But on the snowy set of Horses of Mcbride, being shot this week near Turner Valley and on Moose Mountain, the most fascinating story-within-the-story may be the feel-good tale of a sorrel mare named Lady.
Lady, one of the equine stars who shares screen time with Aidan Quinn, Mackenzie Porter, Kari Matchett and Michelle Thrush, has been typecast as a horse that needs rescuing.
Because, while the production is not providing specific details, Lady her-
We had to start slowly because (her stomach) was small.
JOHN SCOTT,
VETERAN HORSE WRANGLER
self was rescued from bleak conditions near Cochrane, says veteran movie horse wrangler John Scott. Lady was purchased for the production and will likely be adopted after the shoot.
For now, she’s getting healthier by the day.
“We had to start slowly because (her stomach) was small,” Scott says. “So we start them off slow and just work (her) up.”
Lady was down nearly 230 kilograms when arriving on the set, Scott says.
Under his watchful eye, and with the support of the SPCA, she is being fattened up and has proven to be co-operative and docile in front of the camera.
Scott says he has already received interest from two or three people to adopt the horse after filming.
The other horse in the film, while thin, was not rescued and will go back to its owner in B.C. after the shoot.
Scott is a veteran horse wrangler and stuntman based in Alberta who has worked on everything from the locally lensed Unforgiven to Lord of the Rings in New Zealand.
But he admits his quest to find two horses thin enough to fit the requirements of the movie was one of the biggest challenges of his career.
“It was very tough,” Scott says. “We started the show last summer with two horses that were in great shape: one was a black and one was a sorrel. We thought those two colours would be easy to double into.”
Scott had a network of 50 to 60 people searching for animals that could match the earlier scenes of the healthier-looking horses shot around Kananaskis.
“This was more trouble for me than 400 head of horses in New Zealand,” Scott says, referring to his wrangling duties on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings epic.
Still, it underlines the “miracle” theme of Horses of Mcbride, which is based on the true story of a group of volunteers who helped free two horses trapped high in the Rockies near Mcbride, B.C. Porter plays a teen who spearheads the rescue, helped by her father (Quinn) and others in the community.
The film is scheduled to air on CTV during the Christmas season.
Writer and director Anne Wheeler says she hopes the production will give Lady a new lease on life. Both horses have taken advantage of the plentiful food and fattened up considerably, she says.
But the stranger-thanfiction horse stories don’t end there. Thrush, a Gemini-winning Calgary actor who has a role in Horses of Mcbride, was shocked to discover that the other equine star — a black gelding named either “Slim” or “Dark,” depending on who you talk to — had a personal connection.
When she was in B.C., Thrush lived with a horse trainer and would frequently ride a gelding named Dark.
“It was a huge part of my life when I was living in B.C.,” she says, adding that the horse is thin because of its age. “I guess it’s serendipity. I was doing a scene last week with Aidan Quinn and the other people in the cast and this dark horse caught my eye. I kept looking at this horse and thinking, ‘I’ve got this feeling, this love for this horse.’ ”
She posted a picture of the horse on her Facebook page, which prompted a call from its owner, who confirmed it was the same horse both she and her daughter would ride in B.C.
“I didn’t think in a million years that I’d be up on Moose Mountain, in the Kananaskis, in Alberta, doing a scene with Aidan Quinn, looking into the eyes of a horse that I lived with,” she says.