Last Chance Mustang

by Mitchell Bornstein

  If Samson held out hope for those who had brutalized him for more than half his lifetime, then I most certainly could hope, believe, that he could be gentled, trained, and eventually mounted.

  Deep down, in Samson’s dark, intelligent, and expressive eyes, I saw that fierce and loyal companion long known to the native tribes. Buried beneath layers of contempt, there existed the markings of a buffalo-catcher that would tirelessly chase and pursue its prey until capture. Hidden under six years of justifiable distrust, I saw the nineteenth-century Indian warhorse that rode into battle without fear—a painted, breathing, and galloping résumé of conquest, tribal history, and tribal pride. Obscured by a lifetime of unwarranted punishment and pain, there lurked an intelligent, innately and instinctively driven cow horse and herder extraordinaire.

  The problem was how to get through to the greatness that lay beneath, how to locate and tame the illustrious and esteemed Indian pony and cowboy cow horse obscured by years and untold layers of damaged horse.

  After witnessing Samson’s crime, Amy was nearly convinced that he was not worth the effort. But I had seen the warhorse within and my rekindled flame was now aglow. My passion for training was returning, my love for horses making a comeback. Everyone, including Jamie, my girlfriend of six months, thought that I was wasting my time and risking my life. But I had a plan. If Samson and Amy could each learn to tolerate, understand, and accept the other, then together they could make a new start. Together they would have a home.

  Several moments of silence passed before I answered Amy, “Today was very hard for Samson. He had to disregard all that he knew and start fresh, and he did just that. It’s in there; underneath all that fear, all that contempt, all that doubt and insecurity. Underneath all those bad memories there is a horse.”

  Back in my truck, I shifted the gear lever into reverse and started down the driveway. For some reason, I stopped and looked out to Samson. He stood motionless—head outstretched, surveying the apple. Seemingly aware of my gaze, he raised and cocked his head to the right as our eyes met. And then, with what from a distance appeared as a mild nod, he lowered his head and hurriedly picked up an apple quarter. His head back to the vertical position, Samson once again cocked his head to the right and gazed upon my position. In an instant, the bright red chunk that hung from his lips and reflected the afternoon sun, disappeared.

  Now that’s being a horse.

  {5}

  CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

  As a horse runs, think of it as a game of tag with the wind.

  —TRE TUBERVILLE

  In Samson’s lifetime, timing was everything.

  During his early years, good timing allowed Samson to avoid the BLM wranglers and helicopters. Bad timing sent Samson to a myriad of abusive homes and cruel owners. Good timing first brought Samson and me together, and after it seemed our time together had come and gone good timing then reunited us. And strange as it may seem, good timing framed Samson’s capture in 2003. Had he been captured a year later and not subsequently adopted, Samson would have been a “three strikes” horse subject to the “Burns Rider;” a 2004 amendment to the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.

  As a “three strikes” Mustang—a wild horse passed over three times for adoption—Samson would have been eligible for outright sale to any interested party “without limitation.” Unlike Mustangs funneled through the Adopt-a-Horse-or-Burro Program, once sold Samson would not have had the protection of the twelve-month probationary period during which his owner would have been subject to random BLM inspection. Since Samson was willful and all “wild at heart,” his sole purchaser would have been a kill buyer—one who buys auctioned Mustangs at bargain basement prices and ships them directly to slaughter. Samson’s bill of sale would have been a one-way ticket to the slaughterhouse.

  Where fortune had closed doors on Samson, fate had opened gates.

  By the second week of October, my thoughts were anything but so philosophical. After the advances of our first training session, most horses would have understood that I was the boss, they were the student. But Samson was not most horses. In the lessons that followed, we repeated our choreographed dance and pursuit. I pressured; he sought an escape route. I advanced; he violently retreated. At times, fear seemed to drive Samson’s flight. In other instances, he was a headstrong former warrior stallion determined to cement his role as the alpha.

  One side of Samson needed my patience, understanding, and a degree of compassion. The other required firm direction, disciplined behavior, and structure. Both were in need of a complete overhaul. Deciphering who I was dealing with and figuring out how to teach, train, and reshape each would prove to be the greatest challenge of my career.

  The four-hour round-trip drive from my downtown Chicago apartment to Amy’s farm meant that I could only work Samson on the weekends. Foul weather was just around the corner and anyone and everyone who had a horse with some problem wanted it resolved prior to winter’s onset. Between my other horse clients, my commitments to the therapeutic riding center, and my legal work, I was beginning to feel the strain. Catch-up time soon became between the hours of one and three in the morning.

  No longer a twentysomething law student able to pull off all-nighters, I questioned how long this lifestyle could continue before I crashed and burned. Making matters worse, I had little time for Jamie and when we were together she claimed that I was distracted.

  After my second session with Samson, Jamie made her feelings known: “Let’s be clear on one thing: I will not compete with a horse.”

  Just two weeks into my war with Samson, both of our worlds had been turned upside down. Something soon would have to give.

  By the time I was ready to catch Samson the uncatchable horse, I had identified an issue that would complicate the already-monumental task at hand. Whenever Samson faced me, he did so by exposing the right side of his body, while consistently guarding and shielding the left. Between Amy, Lisa, and those before me, explanations were aplenty. Some believed that Samson suffered from poor eyesight on his left side. Others were certain that his brutal tormentors had favored striking him on the left.

  My rationalization was far more elemental and profoundly more telling.

  Moments after the BLM wranglers captured Samson, the wild Mustang stallion was forced into a cage and branded with his permanent freeze mark. The mark identified his year and place of capture but couldn’t tell of the fear and trauma that he experienced. Though the branding was classified as painless and harmless, to an alpha stallion such as Samson the process left scars of a different variety. These scars spoke to unwanted submission, a loss of family and freedom, and, ultimately, defeat.

  Tattooed on the left side of his neck, the BLM freeze mark was Samson’s scarlet letter. It was forever a reminder of his life stolen away. The totality of Samson’s behaviors, his level of contempt and disdain for his new world, said that it was a life that Samson had cherished.

  The left side of his body foreclosed to my approach, from twenty yards away I slowly angled in toward Samson’s right side. Gradually, I fished the lead line through the mane and up to his neckline. Samson leapt away, then doubled back and faced me. Standing upright on his hind legs, he threw two foreleg strikes targeted directly at my face. I dove to the ground as his left hoof nicked my baseball cap—sending it tumbling to the ground. Tossing his head and throwing bucks, Samson bounded off to the far side of the crib pasture.

  As he harbored deep-seated issues with the lead line, the left side of his neck, and capture, Samson’s obstructive behavior continued unabated for an additional sixty minutes.

  Eventually, I was able to fish the lead line up over his right side, down the left, and firmly grab both ends of the rope underneath his throat. Samson took a moment to consider his options. His eyelids narrowed, his gaze hardened, and his lip curled upward. And then, without warning, he blew.

  I yanked hard on the lead line; he, in turn, reared up and threw a right cross that missed my jaw by
inches. I was exercising control over Samson and he was fighting back. I wasn’t schooling a damaged and brutalized victim; I was battling a proud and willful former wild Mustang stallion.

  I spoke in a reassuring tone to try to calm this horse who was barely holding it together, “Eaaaaassssyyyy, boy … whoa … and hold your stand.”

  For the next twenty minutes, I comforted and stroked Samson until his anxiety seemed to ease. Both ends of the lead line still in hand, I slowly walked a semicircle around Samson’s muzzle—coming to rest parallel with his off-limits left side and the BLM freeze mark. This was too much, too soon for Samson, and he immediately sought flight. Only now, with him properly secured and under lead, flight was no longer an option. With each of his many attempts to gain momentum and run, I pulled Samson back into a tight 360-degree circle and spoke to him.

  “Sorry, buddy, those days are gone.”

  Unable to escape, Samson engaged his hindquarters, swinging his hind end around like a wrecking ball zeroing in on its target. His head veered right as his rump rotated left. Full impact was imminent. I was a hockey player about to receive a body check into the boards from a one-thousand-pound opponent.

  As his pendulum-like mass of muscle swung into me, I dug my right elbow into the flank—the fleshy area located between his midsection and hind end. The impact launched me into the air and then sent me hurtling to the ground. Dazed and winded, but still holding the lead line, I jumped back to my feet.

  With nowhere to run to, Samson appeared defeated.

  With the realization that I was not going away and he was not getting away, with the recognition that I had not struck, yelled at, or punished him, Samson soon eased up and the fight that had previously permeated his every muscle and tendon soon wafted away with the dust cloud that engulfed our struggles. This skirmish, this back-and-forth battle of wills, was nothing more than a war of attrition and I was well versed in how to win both the battle and the war.

  Rather than punish Samson for doing that which came naturally and instinctively, I quietly and patiently waited him out.

  And then moments later, for the very first time, I ever so gently placed my hand upon the left side of his neck and the BLM freeze mark. My fingers passed through the hairs of his neck—permanently tinted white from the freeze-branding process—revealing various hieroglyphic-like symbols that told his long and storied journey: his estimated year of birth, registration number, and state of capture.

  Borne by all captured Mustangs, the BLM tattoo provides the sole means of identifying and tracking each culled and captured wild horse. Under his approving hard gaze, like a blind person reading braille, I slowly reviewed Samson’s life story.

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. Like so much in this modern era, Samson, a horse born to the wild, was a living and breathing barcode.

  My hand moved across his left shoulder, back, and left flank. Samson mustered every pound of muscle he could call upon to maintain his composure and hold his stand. For the second time since our introduction, I found myself admiring this Mustang’s willingness to shun his better judgment, disregard his inner voice, and cast aside years of distrust to ever so slightly trust in a stranger’s touch.

  While this was an opportune moment on which to conclude the day’s session, the reality was that Samson’s hooves were growing longer and, like it or not, a quickly approaching date with the farrier was inevitable. This was as good a time as any to start Samson’s leg training. There was little doubt; it was going to be a slow and violent process.

  Moving back over to his more comfortable right side, standing off the point of his right shoulder, I ran my hand over the humerus, across to the elbow, and then slowly down the forearm. Instantly Samson reared up and attempted several foreleg strikes. With the lead line looped over his neck, I promptly aborted Samson’s takeoff.

  Samson’s reaction communicated that which he could not speak: Steer clear of my legs.

  Annoyed by the fact that I had checked his vertical aspirations, or perhaps put off by my control over his actions and reactions, Samson’s anger meter jumped directly into the red zone. Wildly and violently, he threw his head right, then left, and attempted several head butts and body checks while I firmly controlled the lead line.

  “Nooooottttt,” I firmly told him as I spun him around in a tight circle, “that is no longer acceptable behavior.”

  With him frustrated and suddenly enraged, Samson’s intemperate anger returned for a second performance as he attempted to reach me with a right hind leg forward strike. It was something you don’t see every day and a warning that he was on the verge of losing it. The fight—bucks, body checks, foreleg and hind-leg strikes, and rearing—continued for thirty minutes with Samson not even winded.

  Once Samson realized that I would continue to touch his leg so long as he continued to object, he slowly calmed himself and his nasty little temper soon receded. Again I ran my hand down his upper foreleg to the knee, and though clearly agitated and put off, Samson kept his anger and wrath in check.

  Immediately I stood up, moved away, provided verbal praise, and patted his neck. Samson had complied and he had earned a release of pressure. Horses possess a relatively undeveloped corpus callosum—the neurological tissue that connects both hemispheres of the brain—and thus the equine mind learns and processes skills just one side at a time. In order to touch Samson’s left foreleg, I had to repeat the entire process from that side. Slowly, I arced around Samson’s face making my way toward the left foreleg.

  Ever the warfare strategist, the Mustang combatant was way ahead of me.

  From a complete standstill, Samson vaulted forward in a vain attempt to get away. He made it as far as the length of the lead line—fifteen feet—before being yanked back to reality. He could have put his body into it and dragged me off, but he didn’t. Slowly but surely, through control of his actions and movements, I was establishing myself as the alpha of our small herd. Once again, I pulled Samson in close and made him trot tight circles around my position. Over the next thirty minutes, he bucked, reared, and kicked, but eventually he lost. Able to finally rub Samson’s left foreleg from the point of the elbow to the knee, I immediately heaped praise upon my crestfallen subject.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, buddy; you may have lost this battle, but the true war lies ahead. I still have yet to handle your hinds, and then of course we have to lift and pick out all four of your hooves. You will have opportunities aplenty to put me down and finish me off.”

  I could act all macho and say I was primed for the challenge, but the reality was that I dreaded the prospect of handling Samson’s hind legs. The day’s lesson successful and complete, I pulled the lead line back across Samson’s neckline and in a puff of dust and mud he was gone.

  “Hopefully, we can still be friends,” I announced to a somewhat dejected and deflated Samson as I placed a quartered apple a few yards from his location. “I’ll see you next week.”

  After I exited the pasture, Amy approached with a concerned expression. “Mitch, I’m amazed and so thankful for everything, but I simply can’t afford to pay you for any of this.”

  “Don’t worry,” I answered. “This is my way of giving back to an animal that has brought me so much over the past twenty years. So, consider us square.”

  Among local horse enthusiasts, it is widely known that I have never turned away a hard case on account of money or lack thereof. Maybe Amy didn’t know this fact; most likely she did. Samson would just be another of the many horses I had trained free of charge. And yet this Mustang wasn’t just another charity case; something about our relationship, our bond, was unique.

  Despite our struggles, I started to sense that I was getting under this loner’s skin, as he was already under mine. I was drawn to Samson, as he seemed drawn to me.

  The training plan for the following weekend included Samson’s further socialization to the lead line and, more significantly, removing and replacing his halter. During our initial sess
ions, he had remained standoffish and doubting at his best and violent and explosive at his worst. Like every other damaged and maladjusted horse, this Mustang needed a healthy dose of time and patience. My hope was to have Samson halter broke by the end of the weekend, but in light of his significant head and face issues, I had absolutely no idea how to go about it. I had a tentative schedule for our sessions, but I would have to go hands-on and face-to-face with my pupil and just let the lesson plan evolve.

  Samson’s ability to forgive and forget as well as my horsemanship skills would be put to the test.

  The schedule for both weekend days was identical: to work Samson in thirty-minute intervals, release him for twenty minutes so that he could rest and contemplate that which he had learned, and then return to repeat the process. This work/rest method had proven successful in countless similar situations over the years and would prove integral to Samson’s training regimen.

  Alerted to my approach from the driveway, Samson, in full bravado, put on quite the exhibition. He launched himself several feet in the air. He threw a dozen wild bucks. He galloped across the pasture taking hard, sliding turns.

  Samson understood what my presence meant. I was the alpha who was controlling his behaviors, actions, and reactions. As my authority had increased, Samson’s had correspondingly decreased, and he was less than pleased.

  While Samson’s demonstration of machismo unfolded, I yelled out to him, “Just remember what I whispered to you in the stall that day, ‘You trust me, I’ll trust you.’ You and I, we have a binding contract!”

  The first order of the day was to handle the area between Samson’s ears—the poll. As my hand ran up the right side of his face, he squealed and attempted yet another head butt. Instantly he met my right elbow—his new and most intimate best friend. Verbal reprimand and tight circles at a trot were immediately imposed.