WEBSTER When it comes to mustangs, “wild, wild horses” literally could not drag Diane Delano away, as the Rolling Stones song goes.
She has collections of old movies and books about wild mustangs and how they were rounded up. Paintings and posters of mustangs and burros hang on her walls, several collectible model horses line her shelves, and about 60 live mustangs roam her 42-acre ranch in this rural Sumter County town.
“I’ve been involved with wild horses for a lifetime,” Delano said, pointing to an article about mustangs she’d clipped from a newspaper in 1993.
Delano has worked with wild horses for 31 years. She began the Wild Horse Rescue Center informally in Mims, about 45 miles east of Orlando, in 2001 after acquiring some mustangs. The rescue became an official nonprofit organization in 2007 and moved to its current property in 2019.