Last Chance Mustang

by Mitchell Bornstein

  Showcasing his tremendous visual capabilities, Samson had located a target that in his mind posed imminent danger and certain harm. Though he was a warrior’s warrior, Samson’s abusive past —his many battles and victories fought against those who had sought to beat him down— had come at a deep and profound cost. He was now a battle-tested, shell-shocked warrior who saw anything and everything new as a tool of pain and punishment. Terrified and poised for battle, Samson refused to enter the corncrib pasture.

  At that moment, and though we were so close to achieving our goal, I knew we had a long journey ahead of us.

  This reaction to the saddle, in addition to Samson’s near catastrophe with Asbestos and the gate, highlights the difficulties and hazards associated with training and handling any large animal. While the many inherent risks and dangers cannot be eliminated, when working with horses there are ways to safely minimize one’s exposure to both threat and injury. With this in mind, my second rule of horsemanship postulates and reminds owners to always remember where a horse comes from and to never forget how a horse moves, sees, thinks, and reacts.

  More often than not, horse owners err by attributing complex human thoughts, cognitive processes, and emotions to their four-legged companions. Lacking a brain that permits multilayer thought processes and deductive reasoning, horses are driven more by primal, instinctive motivators than emotion. Whether a best friend, investment, or aid in work, the horse is still an animal and must always be treated and handled as such.

  In order to understand how a horse learns, a true horseman must first grasp how his steed thinks, perceives, and comprehends. Unlike its equid counterpart, the human brain is dedicated mostly to the cerebrum and thought, memory, association, and conscious decision making. Conversely, the horse brain is predominantly comprised of cerebellum, which manages gross muscle coordination, movement, and control. In other words, humans think, horses act. Where a person first evaluates a threat, a horse runs from it. As the horse is an animal of prey and creature of flight, it stands to reason that natural selection and evolution have gifted the horse with the resources required to survive and flourish in the inhospitable wild.

  While the equine mind is designed primarily to learn and remember items of biological significance, particularly safe and hostile locales, food, water, and forage locations, it can, nevertheless, grasp and digest extensive information when it is presented in the proper manner. With many different techniques available to teach Samson various skills and modify certain of his behaviors, I employed a combination of each and every method to help my pupil weather the learning process.

  At the most rudimentary level, habituation teaches a horse to accept a stimulus through repeated or prolonged exposure. Such desensitization can occur through approach and retreat training—applying a stimulus and then removing it before the horse reacts negatively. Alternatively, flooding maintains and sustains a stimulus until the point at which a horse no longer reacts with an undesirable, adverse response. Many trainers will similarly rely upon classical conditioning, made famous by Pavlov and his dog, teaching their horse to create associations between unrelated stimuli. In effect, the horse learns to relate a cue or signal with a subsequent and otherwise-unrelated event and response.

  So, a horse who has been turned out in a pasture that abuts a heavily traveled road will eventually be habituated to cars and motorcycles. The animal who accepts its winter blanket after weeks of being exposed to it has been desensitized to the otherwise-scary object. And the horse who is told the word “trot” each time it is simultaneously tapped with a crop and transitioned from a walk to a trot will quickly associate the word with the acceleration of its gait.

  Operant conditioning, otherwise known as trial-and-error learning, is a third method of instruction, which when employed helps a horse create a link between a behavior and a resulting positive or negative consequence. Once applied repeatedly and consistently, trial-and-error training directs a horse to modify its behavior based upon the either positive or negative consequences to its original actions. When a trainer is working with conditioning methods and techniques, positive reinforcement is often used to compel a desired behavior’s repeated repetition. In contrast, negative reinforcement is applied up until the moment that a sought-after action first occurs, at which time it is removed in reward for compliance.

  The rider, for example, who applies leg pressure to his or her horse to direct it to speed up and then instantly releases the leg aid once there is compliance is employing operant conditioning and negative reinforcement. Similarly, these same methods explain why a previously unwilling horse will load onto a trailer once its owner retrieves a lunge whip. And last, the horse who lifts its leg and immediately receives a treat has learned, through positive reinforcement, the benefits to continually repeating this act.

  From our first encounter to the present day, Samson, like every horse I have worked with, has been trained via a combination of habituation, classical, and operant conditioning. Whether I was approaching Samson in his stall or in the pasture, leaving a cooling blanket sitting on a fence, placing and removing the halter, or handling his legs and hooves, each and every corresponding method of instruction has had its time and place. In each instance that these methods were applied, Samson came to grasp, understand, and apply skills that he previously could not comprehend and had vehemently rejected. Violence and excessive punishment, techniques mistakenly employed and applied over the years to modify this horse’s behaviors and conduct, were not now and had never been necessary to mold this wild Mustang into a domesticated companion and partner.

  While many owners understand the various ways in which horses can learn and apply skills, most lack a true appreciation of the manner in which their mounts see and perceive the outside world. Time after time, I have stood by and watched as owners have punished horses for hesitating before entering a stall or momentarily balking before loading onto a trailer. Likewise, I have observed in horror as many a rider has disciplined his or her horse for lowering a head when walking into a puddle or stepping onto a bridge, or for suddenly raising its head to look upon a potential threat far off in the distance.

  Because it is an animal of prey, natural selection and evolution have furnished the horse with an eye that is the largest of any land mammal and a visual cortex that handles one-third of all sensory input transmitted to the equine brain. With a field of vision consisting of a 340-degree arc around its body, horses can track movement and detect predators like no other. Gifted with this tremendous visual acuity, they view the outside world through a combination of monocular and binocular vision. Whereas humans solely possess binocular vision, retinal cells called cones permit a horse to simultaneously view and process independent images from both the left and right eye. A second set of cones enhances a horse’s vision and affords binocular vision for a very limited arcing span of 55 to 65 degrees directly in front of the horse. With a significant number of rods—cells in the retina responsible for night vision—horses also possesses excellent vision during the evening hours.

  By virtue of its numerous evolutionary-directed ocular enhancements, a horse can detect and flee from nearly any impending threat. Notwithstanding these heightened and acute visual capabilities, a horse’s visual spectrum contains several gaps and weak points. All horses, for example, have blind spots in front of the muzzle, behind the rump, and along the sides. A horse will accordingly step to the side to see what is behind it and back up and lower its head to see what sits in front.

  As horses primarily rely upon their monocular vision, they in turn lack good depth perception. Accordingly, a horse will lower its head to judge closer distances and raise it to evaluate objects at greater distance. When alternating between monocular and binocular viewing, a horse will experience brief blurred vision. While horses see better in low light than humans and cats, their eyes have a harder time shifting from light to dark environs and will require several seconds to make the adjustment. And with a nearly complete c
ircular field of vision, a horse will often freeze or spook when confronted with even the slightest movement or activity from within its realm.

  With even a minor appreciation of how horses view and perceive the world around them, horse owners can come to understand their animals’ actions and help each develop confidence and security in an otherwise-threat-charged world. The owner who, for example, permits a horse to stand for several moments before entering a darkened stall or trailer might discover that the horse will no longer object to entry. A horse who is permitted to lower its head to evaluate a puddle or bridge may very well enter or cross each with ease. And if afforded several momentary seconds to track, locate, and identify any sudden movement from within its vicinity, a horse will promptly transition from an animal of threat detection and defense to a trusty trail companion.

  The understood horse is a happy, willing, and compliant horse.

  While Samson remained terrified of the saddle and petrified in his tracks, thousands of miles away the Calico Mustangs—torn from their herds and their lands—likewise stood scared stiff in holding corrals and pens. New environs, unfamiliar horses from different herds comingled and fighting to establish authority, a changed diet, and the ever-present stench of death had them panicked and agitated. With fifty-three Mustangs now lost at the holding facilities and an additional thirty-five unborn foals delivered stillborn, these Mustangs had every right to be nervous, doubting, and afraid. The tragic and continual loss of life required explanations, but none were forthcoming.

  Unabated, Mustangs—adult and unborn—would continue to perish.

  As I was a nondrinker and one never interested in the party scene, my birthday had come and gone without much fanfare. Most would probably say I was boring, but my birthdays were anything but. My twenty-fifth birthday was spent hanging off a mountain at fourteen thousand feet; my thirtieth, sledding across the Arctic Circle in subzero temperatures. Fearful that time apart would cause my Mustang pupil to recoil, grow distant, and retreat back into his shell, this year I had failed to plan a big fortieth-birthday adventure.

  But now I was faced with a terribly difficult decision. Recognizing that I had deferred my celebratory vacation, two of my brothers had given me a gift—one was going skiing in Jackson Hole with his family; if I chose to join them, my airfare would be covered.

  My concerns with regard to Samson were twofold. First, just weeks away from mounting, a potential skiing injury and subsequent break in training would not only set back our accomplishments but most likely undo all that had been taught and learned. Second, I would be away for ten days. Numerous previous experiences had instructed that three days of separation between Samson and me would cause minor issues; five days or more would produce the old fear-riddled, doubting, untrusting enemy combatant. I knew that each day that we were apart would amount to weeks in Samson’s mind. The longer I was away, the greater the likelihood that Samson’s old persona would once again take hold only to possibly never retreat.

  Everyone I consulted declared that my theory was ridiculous. “You have spent months with this horse,” they would say. “He will pick up right where you left off.” But I knew Samson; I knew that he was different. Having gone years without a day, let alone a week, off, I decided it was time for a vacation. A break and time away would do me good. My heart told me that our bond was strong enough to survive my absence; my gut counseled that Samson would not let me back in once I returned.

  I should have listened to my gut.

  {11}

  ALONE AGAIN AND SOLITARY

  A colt you may break, but an old horse you never can.

  —FRENCH PROVERB

  With the BLM’s Calico Mountains Complex roundup concluded hundreds of horses short of its original goal, critics promptly assailed the agency for both overstating wild horse population estimates and overdramatizing purported Mustang-induced rangeland degradation. These criticisms were nothing new; they were in fact over half a century in the making.

  Decades earlier, while in attendance at a June 6, 1952, Virginia City BLM permit hearing, Wild Horse Annie’s husband, rancher Charlie Johnston, sardonically heralded the BLM’s facts, processes, and methodologies, “I was most impressed by the BLM’s statistics and I’d sure as hell like to have the secret to making stock multiply the way they said the Mustangs did: one hundred this year, 200 the next, 400 the next, and so on! Yes sir, I’d sure like to know the secret.”29

  Nearly sixty years later, the Calico roundup had exposed still-faulty BLM population estimates and the arguable existence of a still-present hidden agenda. The new information was welcomed and disseminated, but like everything else in life, the good news came at a cost: mature and yet-to-be-born Mustang lives. Mustangs were suffering and dying so that the flawed and faulty system designed to protect them could be exposed.

  As I arrived at the farm for March’s first visit, I was greeted not by my equine student but, rather, by an old nemesis. Opening the doors that led into the barn, I nearly became the farm’s second gelded resident. Springing forth from the darkness, the young goat who had ravaged my truck and her two pointy horns ran through my legs and then down the driveway—nearly taking my reproductive capabilities along for the ride. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that she had been lying in wait.

  Ike, Cosmo, the black mutt, and Asbestos were my best buddies, but the goats, geese, roosters, and chickens remained my sworn enemies.

  February’s dark and cold days now passed, Mother Nature was providing early signs that winter was preparing to make its exit. If I had believed, if I had hoped, that winter’s deep accumulating snowfall would be present for and soften my numerous and soon to be certain involuntary exits from atop Samson’s back, I had definitely miscalculated. Still many weeks away from mounting Samson, I now knew that there would be no soft snow cover to ease my pain. First things first, however, Samson needed to learn to be responsive to the bit and then accept his saddle pads.

  Whereas many trainers, will first mount a horse and then subsequently teach it to turn and maneuver, I choose to instill each of these skills through groundwork introduced prior to the first mounting. If the horse won’t yield to the bit, won’t stop or turn, then I won’t saddle it. In effect, the first mounting is the final layer of a multilayer cake, the final act of a multiple-act play. Mounting a horse says that I have taught the animal all that it needs to know to perform under saddle—the animal understands my expectations and knows what needs to be done. Once again, the informed horse is an educated, understanding, and capable horse. For Samson, this meant that he had to learn how to yield to the bit’s direction—the time had come to long-line Samson.

  Long-lining teaches a horse to respond to and then move as one with the bit. When one long-lines a horse, driving lines are attached to the bit rings on each side of the animal’s mouth and its movements and direction of travel are controlled by a handler standing several yards behind. Over time and with practice, the horse learns to expect, interpret, and then respond to rein and bit cues. The horse learns to be controlled.

  Long-lining for Samson would mean that I dictated when, where, and how he walked. Voluntarily or involuntarily, he would have to surrender control and lose what little independence and autonomy he still held on to. It also meant that both sides of his mouth would be attached to twenty-five feet of his greatest enemy—the rope. Making matters worse, I would be standing far behind his rump and manipulating him via two lines attached to his mouth. Two of Samson’s worst fears were about to become a fixture of his training regimen and there was no way he was going to succumb to this willingly.

  Working with an array of horses over the course of many years, I learned a long time ago that no two are ever the same. Thus, I pride myself on being flexible when breaking, instructing, and training. While the skills I teach are almost always the same, the manner and speed in which I present each is always different. The horse, the pupil, dictates when and how I present each new element of a training progr
am. With Samson, this meant that my training motto of flexibility quickly gave rise to a new term of art: “compromise.” While many, if not most, trainers would undoubtedly criticize this concept, for Samson and me it worked.

  After great thought and deliberation, the art of compromise led me to the conclusion that long-lining Samson would only retard our accomplishments. It would take weeks of hassle, if not violence, before Samson would even consider the idea of accepting, being attached to, and then being controlled by the driving lines. The benefits didn’t remotely outweigh the costs. And so, I decided to basically short-line Samson. I would attach a set of reins and operate them while standing at his side.

  It took very little time and even less effort for Samson to make his decision. Short-lining it was. Compromise had prevented one less battle and saved horse and horseman from a great deal of aggravation. Call it cheating, cutting corners, or a failure to assert myself, but I called it simply smart.

  In Samson’s space—that’s where I spent most of my time throughout our subsequent sessions. And though like everything else it took a great deal of time and a great deal more patience, Samson came to release into the bit, flex at the poll, and bend at the neck. He learned to steer and he learned how to be controlled. And oddly enough, he seemed okay with that. Horse and bit were one; horse and horseman were soon to be one.

  We were inching ever closer to our ultimate goal.

  The following week, Samson and I entered the final phase of his training: socialization to the pads and saddle. With his first saddling just weeks away, Samson needed to recognize that the saddle posed little threat and no chance of physical harm. Each session, we moved closer to the innocuous saddle parked in the pasture’s far corner. Ever astute and always processing, the closer we moved to the saddle, the more I was certain that this horse knew what was coming—that he and the saddle were about to forge an intimate relationship. It was during these brief little strolls toward the saddle that Samson the battle-hardened warrior started strategizing and planning his final stand.