SKANEATELES - People are starting to recognize Heather Evans and her horse, Tux, as they ride through town.

The two set out on a journey May 21 to Manitoba, Canada, from Chichester, N.H., to raise awareness - and dollars - to address the plight of some mares in Canada, known as Premarin horses. On Thursday, the pair made their way west from Skaneateles through Auburn.

Premarin is a drug manufactured by Wyeth, a Collegeville, Pa.-based pharmaceutical company. Premarin tablets are prescribed to treat symptoms of menopause. The drug uses a hormone extracted from the urine of pregnant mares.

According to Evans' Web site, savingtheinnocents.com, ranchers who would otherwise have sold the pregnant horses or unwanted foals to horse rescues are pressured by Wyeth to sell the animals to auction houses. Horses transported to those houses are, Evans has said, almost certainly doomed to slaughter.

“We want to force Wyeth to do the right thing and work with the rescues,” Evans said.

Evans tucked a feather into the floppy straw sun hat she wears along her ride. Tux, a 9-year-old Arabian, sported a sack as he rested and grazed along Route 20, carrying food supplements, a tent and other essentials needed for the journey.

So far, Evans said, she has had to sleep only four times in her tent and twice in her sleeping bag in a barn. The public has not only started to recognize her, but even anticipate her stops in town.

A gentleman in Skaneateles saw Tux tied up outside a local eatery and asked, when he spotted her inside, if she was the young woman about whom he'd been reading. When Evans went to pay for her hamburger, the waitress said her bill had been paid.

She said she bunked in Skaneateles Wednesday night, on Coon Hill Road, with a family that also recognized Evans earlier that day. So far, she's encountered friendly faces, with the exception of one episode several miles from Syracuse, where Tux was pelted with an egg. The incident prompted a jump so powerful it knocked one rubber boot off the horse's hoof.

A farrier service was going to be trimming Tux's feet on Thursday night and fit him for a new boot. The managers will guide her to a stay location where Evans can spend the night.

She plans to take horse-friendly roads, with wide shoulders that help her and Tux keep a safe distance from vehicular traffic. They will travel west until they get to Seneca Falls, where they'll follow Route 89 south. Taking a route through Omaha, Neb., Evans said she wants to reach Manitoba by mid-October.

Most of the 70 ranchers with whom Wyeth contracts are based in Canada. A Wyeth spokesperson said that following the guidelines of an “extremely regulated industry,” the company monitors breeding practices to ensure the horses are “high quality and are salable.

“We insist that the horses get sold to good homes and we have programs that ensure that,” said Natalie de Vane.

Evans, whose mother directs Live and Let Farm - a rescue and rehabilitation shelter for unwanted animals - is familiar with the industry and insisted ranchers' hands are tied when they enter into agreements with companies like Wyeth. Restrictions around exporting beef to the U.S. in 2004 - following reports of mad cow disease - put a significant choke on business, and while ranchers have indicated they would prefer to sell their horses to rescue shelters, Evans said, they are bound by their agreements with Wyeth.

“There is no alternative. The ranchers are careful about what they do to make Wyeth happy,” she said.

Evans said she normally does not take chances. Three jobs, a boyfriend and family keep her generally rooted in New Hampshire.

“This is totally weird and out of character for me,” she said.

Yet seeing firsthand how Live and Let Farm was denied two trailer loads of mares and foals this past winter - at 30 horses a trailer - got her worked up. She got a leave of absence from one job, and a temporary replacement for another.

Evans has another goal for her journey: she wants to return from Manitoba with foals. Doing so, though, means she's got to come up with some serious money: $30,000, to be exact. Evans put the average cost of a foal at $800. Pregnant mares, she said, cost $1,100. Then there are expenses for trailers, trucks and fuel. She said she hopes additional coverage will redden the faces of Wyeth executives at the highest levels.

“I'm not asking for anything more than what we've been doing for years,” she said.

Staff writer Olivia Goldberg can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 235, or at olivia.goldberg@lee.net