Last Chance Mustang

by Mitchell Bornstein

  That I could understand. Most horses are gelded at a young age, when the drop in a stallion’s testosterone levels will usually quash the desire to mate, to challenge, and to fight. But if gelded after puberty, engrained aggressive and alpha horse traits often remain a permanent component of the adult horse’s behavior. Gelding Samson in his twelfth year failed to eliminate the behavior that had helped him survive in both the harsh wild and then the abusive domestic world.

  No longer fueled by the combustible, lethal combination of testosterone and adrenaline, Samson had lost a degree of his hard-charging, chemically induced, consequences-are-irrelevant invincibility. But the behaviors, mannerisms, and actions that had matured a young colt into a fully fledged wild stallion would always be irrevocably hardwired into Samson’s psyche. Wild or domesticated, gelded or not, free or caged, Samson was determined to live out his birthright destiny—his destiny as an American wild Mustang.

  Amy had expected that after a snip or two the Terminator would become Mr. Rogers. In this case, the Terminator merely became Rambo.

  Just like a stallion, Samson the gelding would still stand upright to attack. His hind-end kicks would shatter bones. His rump was a battering ram that would bodycheck a victim into submission. He would still establish his hierarchy, his domain, his rule, and extinguish any challenge to his authority. Samson was a walking, breathing, self-defense, self-preservation survival machine extraordinaire standing caged in an eight-by-ten-foot stall.

  Something about the story I was hearing bothered me. If no one could handle this horse, then how did he make it to the farm in the first place? Frank and two of his gang, Amy recounted. They had surrounded, roped, and subdued him. And then, with two lines attached they dragged Samson down the road from the adjoining fire-ravaged property.

  The thought of this perverse act, the mere image of a once-free wild horse dragged half a mile down the road, all the while being manhandled and disrespected, enraged me. This was an iconic American Mustang, a National Heritage Species that fell under the protections of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. He and his cousins were, as proclaimed by Congress, “… living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West…” that “… enrich the lives of the American people…,” and should be considered “… an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.”

  This was a horse whose ancestors held a direct DNA link to the continent’s first horses. His bloodlines had survived the harsh deserts of the East, discovered the Americas, and built the American frontier. He was a living symbol of America and a living, breathing piece of American history.

  This horse deserved better. Any horse deserved better. I began to see why and how Samson had become so violent and so hateful.

  I still had yet to look upon Amy’s Mustang.

  Now I peered into the shadows. Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see the shape of Samson’s head and neck, elevated by the thick concrete slab, piled manure, and soiled straw he stood on. Just my looking into the stall seemed to accelerate his breathing to an even more alarming rate. Tension and fear engulfed the stale barn air.

  “Aren’t you a big boy, Samson. Don’t you worry; this stall is, and will remain, your safe place. I respect that, and there’s no need for us to move hastily here,” I told Samson calmly.

  His right ear rotated to track the sound of my voice. Then his right eye turned to take my measure. Behind me, Amy froze against the wall. Most nervous horses would have snorted, danced in place, swooshed a tail, or at least raised and lowered their heads. But except for his ear and eye, Samson stood stock-still, silently strategizing, like an elk surrounded by wolves.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you,” I said. “I was worried there for a while–I didn’t think you were going to join the party.”

  While Samson and I sized each other up, Amy provided what little background she had on her troubled Mustang. Captured in the Nevada mountains in 2003 under the rotor blades of a low-flying helicopter, he became the property of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—an agency of the Department of the Interior charged with oversight of the majority of this nation’s wild horse population. No longer wild and no longer free, this then six-year-old proud stallion was little more than a number and a statistic. A freeze brand bearing eight symbols of the International Alpha Angle System on his neck’s left side, like all captured wild Mustangs Samson’s mark identified him as BLM property. With the mark applied using a branding iron previously chilled in dry ice, the process permanently destroys the pigment producing hair follicles, leaving white hairs to grow at the branding site.

  In Samson’s case, the white symbols of his freeze mark told that he was one of 10,081 wild horses removed by the BLM from federal rangeland in 2003, one of 300,000 removed since 1972.

  Horses purportedly are removed for their own good—to prevent starvation, dehydration, and death. In reality, wild Mustangs have been displaced to stave off alleged rangeland degradation. Once free, They are now homeless horses, chased from their land by hate, greed, and politics.

  As Amy heard it from Frank, Samson had never received any training, was not worthy of any kindness, and was a real “willful son of a bitch.” The instructions that Amy received from Frank had been passed down, from owner to owner, dating back to Samson’s first days in the domestic horse market: beat this Mustang to get his attention, hurt him, and he will comply.

  These were the Samson Rules. Instantly I understood that the last six years of this horse’s life had been a dark, painful living hell.

  For his first six years, Samson had survived in the harsh and unforgiving Wild West where he and other stallions each acted as judge, jury, and executioner. The stallion creed of justice was no doubt swift and decisive. At times Samson may have been the victim; other times he may have been the enforcer. Either way, Samson survived frontier justice and carried his stallion essence into the world of the two-legged predator.

  There Samson’s stallion ways had sustained him in what proved to be a harsh, cruel, and sad existence. Undoubtedly, however, these attributes went unwelcomed by his new captors and brought down a world of pain and a torrent of abuse. Samson nonetheless knew what it took to survive: Be proud. Never show weakness. Strike first. And never shy from a fight.

  It was Samson’s credo; it was all that he had left. And so he fought and he defended himself.

  While most attribute the concept of gentling to the modern practice of natural horsemanship, the idea that horses should be taught free of violence and coercion actually dates back to 350 BC and the Greek cavalry general Xenophon’s treatise On the Art of Horsemanship. Advocating gentling techniques such as socialization and desensitization, Xenophon instructed that a horseman should always seek and encourage a horse’s voluntary compliance. Violence, punishment, and abuse were to be applied in limited situations and only brought diminishing returns.

  In the words of Xenophon, “The one best rule and practice in dealing with a horse is never approach him in anger; for anger is a reckless thing, so that it often makes a man do what he must regret.… To force him with blows only increases his terror.…”1

  With guidance on how to select, groom, feed, and care for a horse and direction on how to properly lead, walk, control, mount, and ride, Xenophon’s writings implicitly prescribed the formation of a reciprocal partnership between horse and rider. At the crux of this partnership, riders must assume a dominant command position with their horse while constantly evaluating its level of comprehension, fear, interest, and contentment. A horse who is content will absorb skills and techniques through praise and positive reinforcement, rather than force and brutality. Xenophon’s suggested training techniques went widely ignored through the course of his era and on through both the Dark and Middle Ages, when horses were violently beaten to the point of total submission or death. Long forgotten, his teachings first saw resurgence during the Renaissance, when Italian monks recovered and disseminated his treatise. Centuries later,
Xenophon’s observations of equine behavior and his recommended education methods still remain widely applicable to the breaking, handling, and training of the modern-era horse.

  These days, most untrained horses are handled with patience, firm direction, and understanding. By his twelfth year, Samson had been schooled with bullwhips, lariat ropes, anger, and pain.

  With a wealth of hardcase trainers I knew of in neighboring communities, I just assumed that some had tried their hand at Samson. There had been, as Amy told it, vets, farriers, cowboys, and even a couple of neighbors—strangers who had invaded her fenced fortress. Everybody wanted a crack at and declared that they could gentle, change, or cure Samson. And with little more than a boot placed onto the pasture fence, each met Samson the terrible.

  From deep within his pasture he would charge, ears pinned back, head lowered, upper lip curled back, and teeth in full view. One trainer was bitten, a farrier was kicked, and one unlucky soul was trampled. Samson didn’t take prisoners. I realized that I wasn’t the best trainer for the job but, rather, the only one willing to venture into Samson’s domain.

  I took a step closer. Samson’s enormous structural system and stay apparatus—the ligaments, muscles, tendons, and bones—remained locked. His midsection shook with each tachycardic beat of his palpating heart, as if being hit with a club. As his lungs moved air, his nostrils cycled open, then closed, faster than I could process. But instead of rearing, bucking, biting or thrashing about, he waited, marshaling his strength and plotting his defense to my impending intrusion.

  Samson stood primed and ready to launch. This horse was a thinker, a strategist, a warrior.

  I couldn’t help but notice two distinctively sized sets of bloody hind hoofprints on what was left of the barn’s interior walls, and once my questioning went ignored I knew there was more to the story. After a lengthy pause, Amy explained that the other stallion fire refugee, the two-year-old, had on numerous occasions entered the barn and done battle with the imprisoned Samson. The two had fought bitterly, tearing down entire sections of the barn to get at each other, knocking stall doors off their hinges, kicking out walls. They had kicked and reared and used their teeth like chain saws, shredding each other down to the bone.

  Amy had no idea how stallions behave, and the fact that Samson was the stallion’s sire, the thought of a father and son committed to killing each other, turned her stomach. The two-year-old had since been shipped off while the battle scars remained.

  Bloody battles fueled by testosterone and machismo. A reclusive damsel in distress trapped in her living room. A horse who could dodge flying shovels faster than a speeding bullet. Run, I told myself. Get away while you still can. But my heart felt for this caged beast, and my brain and my ego were challenged.

  Samson the Mustang was untrained and unabashedly unapologetic. I was both amused and intrigued.

  As we stood there, Amy’s younger sister Lisa stormed into the barn and stood against the far wall a safe distance from the stall. Samson shuddered but held his pose. I avoided direct eye contact with him, to prevent coming off as a threat. I’d eventually use eye focus to my advantage, though; a fixed stare on a horse’s hindquarters can move him forward, while a steely gaze at the shoulder can move him laterally. No force or intimidation, and no need to shout or strike.

  Ordinarily, a milking stall was about the worst place I could think of to meet a horse like this. In the best of all worlds, a sixty-foot-wide round pen is my first choice, because it gives me space to move an animal off, redirect his motion, or stop him dead in his tracks. Alpha horses like Samson are masters at using body posturing and visual cues to control a herd. For a trainer, the round pen sets up that same kind of dynamic.

  But all I had was an eight-by-ten-foot sardine can, far from ideal for me yet perfect for Samson the warrior. He repositioned his body onto a diagonal, with his rump nearest to the door and his head in the far right corner. He cleverly created just a small triangle of space for me to maneuver in. Stuck between his body and the wall, I could be pummeled with his hind legs, bitten, or bodychecked at will.

  I wondered if Amy’s choice of name for her Mustang was my first warning to steer clear. This was Samson, the Book of Judges’ epic biblical figure, conceived to an infertile mother through the divine intervention of God and his messenger angel. As he was destined from birth to possess tremendous strength by virtue of his long locks of hair and to launch the deliverance of Israel from the rule of the Philistines, Samson’s life was fated to be both heroic and tragic. With deity-like strength, he slew a lion with his own hands and, in the rage of battle, single-handedly slaughtered one thousand Philistines.

  This was a figure of biblical proportion who knew no fear and bore no visible weakness. Tragedy nonetheless followed Samson, as his wife-to-be was burned at the stake and his second love, Delilah, betrayed him and had his locks of hair cut while he slept. With his locks removed, Samson’s power and strength instantly vanished—his capture and fate were irrevocably sealed. Samson’s Philistine captors soon took both his eyes and his freedom. As his final act in life, Samson fulfilled his destined role and collapsed a crowded temple’s pillars, felling himself and three thousand Philistines.

  In life, Samson was a proud character, at times too proud. He was a figure without a home, roaming back and forth between the polarized Hebrew and Philistine societies. He was hunted and punished not only for his ego and vanity but also for his marked differences. In death, Samson sacrificed himself, fulfilled his destiny, and delivered his people from their oppressors’ hands.

  Not unlike the first Samson, Samson the wild Mustang now stood caged and denied his freedom. All that I had seen and heard told me that he too was proud and prideful, possessing both tremendous strength and fortitude. If he had any weakness, Amy claimed that he had yet to show it. Like his three hundred thousand fellow Mustangs, he was snatched from the mountains and plains of his homeland, separated from his herd, and relocated to a holding facility. There and thereafter, he was forced to submit to a people and a way of life of which he knew nothing. And upon his refusal to submit, he was punished and brutalized for not knowing the ways of a domesticated horse. Beaten down—like the biblical Samson—for his differences.

  The winter prior, he was known simply as “the Mustang.” Amy said that her choice of name for this hardcase Mustang had been random, but I had my doubts.

  I knew better than to enter the beast’s cage, but in retrospect I don’t think that Samson and I could have met in any other setting or in any other way. Confined in that stall, we were both forced to believe that neither would turn violent, to hope that neither would inflict harm or injury. We were both forced to belay our fears and trust in the other before trust had even been established.

  I asked the women to move back down the aisle, so Samson could focus on me alone. Also, if I had to flee the stall, I didn’t want the door slamming into either of them. Above all, I wanted to avoid stressing Samson any more than he already was.

  Hands raised, Amy backed off down the aisle, with Lisa in tow. I removed the buttressing planks and laid them aside, then opened the stall door a foot or so. Looking down, I observed that the step up from the aisle to the raised concrete stall would complicate things; if I had to exit fast, I might wipe out and get stomped. Or Samson could catch a hoof in the gutter and break a leg.

  This was not the right place to do this, but it was where we were. There was just one chance to connect with Samson, and this was it.

  “Hey, big guy,” I said quietly. “How do you feel about me coming in there?”

  “No way!” Amy shouted. “No one has ever gone into that stall with him still in there.”

  I don’t know what I was thinking. I tried to look past all of Samson’s warnings—the manic breathing, pinned ears, and body posturing—for some sign, any sign that said that I could enter his stall. Looking through and past his hard stare, I thought I saw profound sadness and longing. I thought I saw an animal who was tired
of going it all on his own.

  I saw a horse who needed a place to call home.

  “You can trust me, buddy,” I reassured Samson.

  But the real question was, could I trust Samson?

  {2}

  FIRST CONTACT

  To me, horses and freedom are synonymous.

  —VERYL GOODNIGHT

  During his early years, Samson the wild horse had been, to borrow Bob Seger’s words, “living to run and running to live.” Locked away in a stall, Samson was now stripped of both his freedom and his very essence.

  Out West, his wild cousins had been faring no better. Powerful special-interest groups, the cattle and hunting lobby and fuel and mining conglomerates that coveted wild horse land, had been taking it, acre by acre. With wild horse herds zeroed out from six states, millions of acres of Mustang rangeland leased to oil and gas interests, and 20 million acres of wild horse habitat and 111 protected herd areas forever lost, the wild Mustang was losing the battle and the war. After so many years of hardship and survival, Samson and his free-roaming cousins were still fighting for their freedom.

  I had made up my mind; I was going into the stall. Those who know me would say that from this point forward there would be no turning back.

  Samson shifted weight between his hind legs. He nervously danced in place.

  “When you’re done with that little two-step of yours,” I said, “maybe I’ll just come on in there and we can get acquainted.”

  He breathed like he had just galloped the straights at Churchill Downs. His body posturing said that he was enveloped in fear and consumed with the desire to fight.

  I was intrigued by what I saw before me. Most horses who suffer years of chronic abuse avert their gaze, droop their head, and stand with a low, slouched back and shrunken profile. Everything about them says that they are broken in mind, body, and spirit. Samson, however, stared hard into my eyes, his neck stood upright and erect, and his back sat taut and rounded. This horse was anything but broken.