CASPER — Gail Mahnke built a veterinary practice, rescued animals while she was on vacation and hauled a bull moose’s head out of the willows a month before a hip replacement.
The retired Casper veterinarian and founder of Casper Animal Medical Center died at 62 after suffering a head injury during a Sept. 12 barrel racing competition in Gillette, her longtime companion Evan Matzner told Cowboy State Daily.
Mahnke was competing at the Fizzbomb Barrel Race & Futurity.
Matzner said he didn't witness the accident, but was told that after crossing the finish line on her horse, she entered the chute area, separated from the horse and struck a concrete barricade headfirst.
Mahnke was flown to Rapid City, South Dakota, where Matzner met her medical flight. She underwent a four-hour surgery and never regained consciousness.
The day before the accident, her nephew Josh Palomo had talked with her about how much fun she was having competing with her daughter, Kady.
“She really was loving every aspect of it,” Palomo said.
For friends who had spent decades trying to keep up with her, the loss is devastating.
“She was like a human tornado,” said Beth Hainsworth, a close friend since college.
Terry Creekmore, who met Mahnke in graduate school around 1989, had another description: “A beautiful, intelligent, 5-foot-2 person to be reckoned with.”
Caring For Others
Mahnke grew up in Casper and returned to Wyoming after completing her veterinary education.
She worked in Casper and Sheridan before opening Casper Animal Medical Center in October 1996 and later became certified in veterinary acupuncture.
Her community work extended to the Casper-Natrona County Health Department board.
At home, she took on another enormous responsibility.
Palomo was in sixth grade when Mahnke became legal guardian to him and his two brothers. She was their aunt, but she raised them as her own children, he said.
He refers to her daughter Kady as his sister.
“I truly felt that she was my guardian angel and still is,” Palomo said.
Taking them in wasn’t something she had to do, he said, but it was something she felt she needed to do.
“One of the most important things that she taught me was how to work hard,” he added.
‘That Damn Moose Head’
Creekmore saw Mahnke’s determination firsthand last year when she drew a bull moose tag near Pinedale.
He joined her three days before the season ended. With five minutes left on the final evening, she shot a bull in a sea of willows marked with grizzly bear tracks, he recalled.
They returned the next morning to haul it out, and Mahnke insisted on carrying the head herself.
She was a month away from a hip replacement.
“Still, she carried that damn moose head out," he said with a chuckle.
Their friendship stretched back to the University of Georgia, where Mahnke and Creekmore’s future wife were graduate-school roommates.
Around 1990, he was working with wild pigs on an island off Georgia accessible only by boat.
A large boar tore a hole in his leg while Mahnke was visiting.
She stitched him up on a fish-cleaning table.
“Anesthesia was a beer and a cinnamon roll,” Creekmore said.
He asked what the cinnamon roll was for.
“Because I just made them,” he remembers her saying.
When he complained that the stitches were crooked, she offered to take them out and put them back in.
“I declined,” Creekmore said.
Signing Waivers
Hainsworth met Mahnke as a freshman at the University of Wyoming. They took animal-science classes, rode horses and trained their dogs together.
Later, when Mahnke was considering a career focused on horses, Hainsworth arranged for her to shadow a veterinarian near her farm in western New York. Mahnke stayed for months.
“She always just loved animals,” Hainsworth said.
When Hainsworth underwent radiation treatment, Mahnke bought her a horse.
It was just 6 months old.
“You need something to look forward to,” Hainsworth recalled her saying.
The horse is now 3, and Hainsworth began riding her this year. At 62, she wondered whether she should hire a trainer.
Mahnke’s response: “Don’t waste your money. You’ve got this.”
That encouragement was part of a friendship built around doing things.
Over the years, their adventures included skydiving, whitewater rafting, skiing all over the West, and enough risk to write a book.
“We were always signing waivers,” Hainsworth said.
Horses Came First
Matzner met Mahnke in 2021. He lived in Custer, South Dakota. She lived in Casper.
Despite the distance, he went to meet her, and the connection was immediate.
Early on, she wanted to know whether he rode horses.
He assured her he had, perhaps a dozen times, at a riding stable in Palm Springs, California.
Mahnke accepted that he hadn’t been born a cowboy, he said, and helped introduce him to her world. They rode into the mountains from her place near Cora, which he described as her happy place.
He understood his position in the hierarchy.
“I’m down on the totem pole. I’m below horses,” he said.
Matzner said she joined a group horseback trip in Mongolia last year, took Kady on an African horse safari, and had another riding trip to Australia planned with Kady and Hainsworth.
She recently bought a horse property near him in Custer, complete with barns, pastures, springs and a bunkhouse. With her nearby, they were looking forward to spending more time together.
“She was enjoying the fruits of her labor,” Matzner said. “The whole world was ahead of her.”
Stray Dogs
Even in Belize, Mahnke found animals that needed her.
Creekmore remembers riding in a golf cart with her as she stopped to check stray dogs. She volunteered at an animal clinic there, spaying and neutering strays, he said.
Matzner remembers one dog in particular.
He was on the mainland when Mahnke, staying at their place in San Pedro, told him she had rescued a sick little terrier mix.
Mahnke took her in and named her Bella. Getting her healthy became a five-month effort.
When Matzner returned and met the dog, he fell for her. Now, Bella goes everywhere with him.
During his interview with Cowboy State Daily, she was laying beside him.
“She’s just always with me,” he said, “and I'll always know where she came from.”
Four Lives Saved
After the accident, Mahnke’s friends traveled to Rapid City to join her family.
Hainsworth caught a flight the night Kady called. Creekmore arrived the next morning and was holding Mahnke’s hand when she died Sunday.
Even after death, Mahnke was helping people. She was an organ donor.
LifeSource wrote that Mahnke's donated kidneys, liver and lungs have saved four people. She gave the gift of sight to two people, and tissue and bone that will help countless others.
Long before the accident, Hainsworth’s own health challenges prompted the two friends to talk candidly about mortality.
The friends asked each other, "‘How would you like to go?’ And we both said, ‘Off a horse,’” Hainsworth recalled. “That’s our favorite thing in the whole world.”
Palomo said he had told his aunt while she was alive how much she meant to him. He remains grateful for everything she did for him, his brothers and their family.
“I can never thank her enough,” he said.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
