Last Chance Mustang

by Mitchell Bornstein

  And as for the airborne mechanical beast that first tore this Mustang from his herd, his land, and his home, when not under saddle Samson has never failed to express his hatred and disdain for this long-despised enemy. While Samson held a tenuous détente with the rope, halter, and riding crop, his long-standing battles with the helicopter would continue. It was fitting that Samson was unable to quash his contempt for the low-flying threat, for every heroic tale needs its evil foil and every superhero needs his archnemesis.

  Perhaps Samson’s exhibition that summer afternoon represented a celebratory act of the BLM’s recent purported change in course. Or, more likely, his animated actions were a warning, a call to arms to all wild horse advocates to stay the course and to never forget that in years prior similar promises and assurances had been cast and then cast aside. If the latter, then Samson was both a wild-at-heart Mustang and a soothsayer. For in the months to come, the BLM’s activities would constitute anything but a new strategy and a new start when it came to managing the nation’s wild Mustangs.

  In the weeks following the BLM’s pronouncements, the policies and practices of the agency charged with managing this nation’s Mustangs fell far short of matching its director’s grand declarations. In California, for example, 1,855 wild horses—nearly 80 percent of the area’s horse population—living on 789,852 acres were targeted for capture and collection. With four times more cattle than horses authorized in the Twin Peaks Herd Management Area, northeastern California would be left with little more than 500 wild horses. Miles away in northwestern Colorado, a small band of isolated free-roaming horses known as the West Douglas wild horse herd was targeted for complete elimination.

  Back in Nevada, the BLM showed no sign of learning from its mistakes. In Ely, 55,000 acres of the Moriah Herd Area were scheduled to be zeroed out. Just to the north in the Tuscarora region of Elko County, faced with an alleged water shortage “emergency,” three herds, over fourteen hundred horses, living on 455,000 acres stood in the BLM’s sights. Where four thousand cattle were permitted to graze in the Tuscarora Herd Management Area, no more than five hundred Mustangs would remain. It was a roundup scheduled for the season’s hottest, most unforgiving days, and it was an undertaking destined to become the next Calico.

  By mid-July, twelve Tuscarora Mustangs had perished from dehydration and roundup-related activities. Immediately the ASPCA, the Animal Welfare Institute, and the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign expressed outrage. The Humane Society of the United States, through its president, Wayne Pacelle, joined in the chorus of criticism: “Methods for capturing, handling and transporting wild horses during gathers are centered, more often than not, on a bureaucratic timeline and agency convenience rather than animal welfare. We urge the agency to place an immediate moratorium on all gather and removal operations until the BLM develops and is prepared to implement a new wild horse management strategy.”34

  Bowing to public scrutiny and criticism and seeking to avoid a repeat of the Calico debacle, on July 15 the BLM temporarily suspended its Tuscarora wild horse gather operations. Ironically, for the Tuscarora Mustangs the issue was not the presence of, but rather, access to available water resources. Forced to navigate a myriad of new livestock fences and cattle gates, the horses were separated from the water holes that for decades had sustained their existence. Once again, humans were the greatest threat to the Mustang’s survival.

  As July came to a close and with twenty-one horses deceased at the resumed Tuscarora gather, fifty-four bipartisan members of Congress forwarded a letter to then secretary of the interior Ken Salazar calling for immediate action. Referencing the Calico and Tuscarora tragedies, the letter stated: “We are concerned by the inability of your agency to acknowledge these disturbing outcomes, change what seems to be deeply flawed policy, and better manage the gathers so as to prevent the unnecessary suffering and death of these federally protected animals.” The correspondence concluded: “… we request that the Tuscarora Complex roundup be suspended, along with any pending gathers, until the agency demonstrates that it has addressed the failings of the current program and can ensure the safety and well-being of the animals you are charged with protecting.” Samson’s previous warnings and predictions were accurate; the BLM was anything but a ship on a new and changed course.

  When I ventured out to the farm the first week of October, my ever-enthusiastic pupil seemed fully cognizant that it was our one-year anniversary. Once I was seated atop his back, and with little hesitation, he unloaded three swift bucks. Samson the volcano had sat dormant for several months, but to my surprise his eruption was little more than a hiccup. This wasn’t an act of defiance; this was a reminder: You mount and ride me because I let you mount and ride me. Just remember that fact the words that I imputed to his hard, unyielding gaze. His message sent and received, Samson then walked off and gave a perfect ride under saddle.

  The truth, the reality, was that I had long since understood that if Samson didn’t want me on his back, then I wouldn’t have been there. Perhaps he was too much horse for me, or possibly I was too little trainer for him. But in truth, I didn’t really see it that way. In reality, despite my time, patience, and understanding, I knew that Samson would always be part authoritarian stallion, part untrained and undomesticated wild horse, and part abused and brutalized victim. This is who Samson was, and this is what he would remain.

  Unable to change any of these things, I had to work around Samson’s many issues. I needed this horse to desire my attention, voluntarily comply with my mandates, and crave my approval. I needed Samson to want the “us.” As Xenophon had instructed centuries before, horse and horseman needed to be partners. And that is exactly what we had become. For the better part of my career, I had advocated that true horsemanship rests upon a partnership between horse and human, and this horse had put my beliefs, my ways, and my abilities to the test. Through all of his moods, ghosts, and demons, his violent PTSD fits and rigid ways, Samson had unquestionably made me a better horseman.

  This much I had already come to understand. But Samson had also taught me a great deal about patience and empathy. Our time together had shown me the true power of mutual understanding, mutual admiration, and mutual respect. What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t have foreseen, is that my time with Samson had made me a better person. He had turned me into a better version of myself. Samson was a partner in the truest sense of the word.

  The winter of 2011 was cold, wet, and record breaking. While animals and humans alike battled the elements, Samson and his combat-tested winter blanket weathered the season’s storms without worry. As the month of February came to a close and as winter prepared its exit, over a period of several days the BLM released a series of noteworthy press releases. In its first statement, and after battling two separate lawsuits, the BLM announced that it was abandoning its plans to round up Colorado’s West Douglas wild horse herd. To the west in Nevada, having already captured fourteen hundred wild horses, the BLM declared the Antelope Complex wild horse gather concluded after determining that the herd’s numerous pregnant mares were at risk. It was a story that could have been, but thankfully was not, the next Calico.

  And last, on February 24 the BLM unveiled its long-awaited accelerated reforms to the Wild Horse and Burro Program. In the words of BLM director Abbey, “We’ve taken a top to bottom look at the wild horse and burro program and have come to a straightforward conclusion: we need to move ahead with reforms that build on what is working and move away from what is not.… [W]e need to enlist the help of partners, improve transparency and responsiveness in the program, and reaffirm science as the foundation for management decisions.”35

  For wild horse advocates, it was the trifecta of announcements and evidence of change that had been a long time coming. With an updated 2008 GAO analysis that reported that the BLM was starting to clean shop and assurances of “reform” and “new ideas,” the agency that oversees our free-roaming Mustangs was promising a “new chapter in the m
anagement of wild horses, burros, and our public lands.”36 Whether or not they could follow through on these promises was an entirely different story.

  The following weekend, as the soil started to thaw and the air turned warmer I ventured out to work Samson. Exiting my truck, I was perplexed by the sight of Valley Girl standing alone in the south pasture. Samson was nowhere to be found. Jumping up on my truck’s front bumper, I located Samson, in the grass, prone on his right side, beside his mare. No one had ever seen him down before, so I knew that I was living my worst nightmare. I ran to the back of my truck and grabbed my trauma kit, but I knew that I had lost him.

  As I passed through the gate and entered the south pasture, my concerns were amplified when Valley Girl failed to run up and excitedly greet my arrival. At this point, the ever-vigilant defensive sentry Samson should have been up and guarding, protecting his territory and his mare. He wasn’t. Running toward the motionless and seemingly lifeless Samson, I was moving at a full clip, but it seemed as though I were stuck in slow motion. Part of me felt nauseous; the rest felt numb.

  “After all we’ve been through,” I said, kneeling beside the unmoving Mustang. Suddenly he opened his eyes, jumped up, and stomped at the ground, as if to say, Can’t a horse take a damned nap around here? Put off by my rude intrusion, he trotted over to the fence line where Ike was standing. Expecting violence and bloodshed, I held my breath.

  “Ike, get away from there, now!” I yelled from across the pasture to no avail.

  But instead of losing his famous Barb temper, Samson simply sniffed at Ike, who returned the greeting. I looked hard but saw no sign of Samson’s curled upper lip or his flesh-shredding incisors. Absent were the high-pitched stallion-like squeals of battle; gone were the wails of a miniature horse being scalped alive. Without my realizing it, Samson had adopted the ragtag bunch of farm animals. He now had a family; he now had his herd.

  As I gazed across at Valley Girl playing with Ike, I realized the profound impact that this easygoing youngster had on my combative student. While I had trained Samson to survive in the human world, Valley Girl had taught him how to live in hers. Where I had failed to convince Samson to unconditionally accept the human species, Valley Girl had persuaded him to embrace another. Valley Girl’s gift to Samson was far greater than mine, for she returned him to a world and a life from which he had been torn and distanced. She returned him to his world, the world of the horse.

  Looking back upon our many ups and downs, successes and failures, moments of joy and instances of disappointment, I realized that my Samson Experience had been quite the ride. Life is chock-full of choices and littered with decisions, and I wouldn’t have changed a single thing when it came to this wayward Mustang. For horse and horseman, it was simply meant to be. And for Samson, fate and luck had given back to him the good fortune that life had taken away.

  Days later, while I was out on the trail working another horse, a beautiful young woman on an oversized warmblood rode up beside me. Her name was Alison; her ride, pleasant but antsy. My horse was calm and collected and Alison wanted to know my secret. A year earlier, I might have given her a gracious answer, shrugged her off as yet another horseperson seeking free advice, and then moved on to finish my ride. But on this day, with the thought of Samson and his adopted herd on my mind, I stayed and talked.

  No one can do it all alone, I thought to myself. While I hadn’t previously realized it, I too, in my own way, had been closed off. With me in my forties and single, the small voice inside my head had counseled that a wife and family were no longer in the cards. Like Samson, I had accepted being alone and solitary, and I had grown indifferent. But my Mustang pupil changed all of that. Samson the beaten-down Mustang who never let go of hope had taught me well.

  Months later, this very same horsewoman would come to the farm and calmly hold Samson while I tended to a serious wound. Both Samson and I knew a good apple when we saw one.

  In my head, the question that my clients had been asking for months, “What exactly is it with you and that Mustang?” echoed through the empty space. With each of my horses, the glue, the bond that binds horse and horseman, is always different. When it came to Alexandros, the horse who had cast in his stall, I was undeniably a strict and authoritarian dictator. For Sky, I was a calming agent who guided her into a new and strange world. And for Samson, I was a friend. In fifteen years of working with damaged and troubled equines, I don’t know that I have ever occupied such a role. And as I thought long and hard on this, I came to understand that I wasn’t just Samson’s friend, but he in turn was mine. Our relationship was reciprocal, our friendship mutual.

  Like true friends, Samson and I had each compromised and sacrificed so that our relationship could flourish. We each had our good days, and we both had our bad. On many occasions, Samson had made it quite difficult for me to call him a friend. And on other days, I am certain that I deserved the swift kick that he wanted to deliver to my back end. We were a dangerous mix of different and contrasting personalities. He was volatile, moody, and explosive; I was static, even-keeled, and easygoing. No matter how hard Samson tried to punch my buttons, I, for the most part, remained indifferent.

  Samson and I were opposites that attracted. We were a truly original odd couple. But as in any good friendship, we each more or less understood and respected the other. Trust, loyalty, and respect were traits both horse and horseman admired, understood, and employed.

  As true friends, Samson and I had each provided the other with lasting gifts. I gave him a new lease on life and taught him how to discard years of hatred, contempt, darkness, and despair. He allowed me to brush shoulders with the most elemental horse I had ever come across and opened my eyes to Equus caballus in its truest, purest, and most noble sense. From the moment that I put eyes on him, I knew that he was different. His bloodlines had survived the deserts of the East, scaled the mountains of the West, traveled the high seas, and discovered the Americas. Samson, the modern era’s version of his ancient and storied ancestors, had shown me the true nature of the horse, returned my love for training, and given me a gift that I could never repay.

  As for what made this horse tick, like a prized diamond there were many facets to Samson, and my understanding of him merely scratched the surface. Ironically, over the years many have voiced similar observations of my personality. Perhaps this is why he and I clicked. Maybe we really were more similar than dissimilar—two complicated, determined, enigmatic aging warriors past their prime. Maybe the Old English saying “show me your horse, and I will tell you who you are” had it right. Either way, for me a part of Samson would forever remain the imposing, barely visible, pedestaled beast lurking in the shadows of a dark stall. A part of Samson would forever be the mysterious and free horse of the wild whom nature and nurture had created.

  Looking out at Samson, I saw something more than a horse, a pupil, and a friend. He was, like all Mustangs, a living and breathing history of the horse and history of the world. His blood carried the genetic code of the first dawn horse. His lungs held the stamina of the fabled desert horses of the East, his legs possessed the speed of the noble Conquistador mounts, and his mind embraced the intelligence and determination of the great Native American warhorse. Nearly every horse that walks this earth carries his bloodline. He has galloped across continents and floated across oceans. He conquered the Old World and discovered the New World. His hooves have carried the sands of the East, the soils of the West, and the salt of the oceans.

  When I looked at Samson I saw greatness.

  I also saw an animal who knew how to survive. He had escaped the devastation of the Ice Age and somehow managed to avoid becoming dinner for mankind’s earliest citizens. The brutal, sadistic training methods of the Old World failed to dent his armor. He was a prized possession to kings and a symbol of certain defeat to the vanquished. He was a trusted mount in life and a necessity for the afterlife. He had chased countless buffalo, dodged the never-ending hail of cavalry bullets,
outwitted the Mustangers, and outrun the BLM helicopters.

  And now he had outlasted his abusers and silenced his critics.

  Samson had weathered the storm. He had entered the world to adversity and led a lifetime of adversity. With greatness in his heart, survival in his blood, and determination in his soul, he was the horse of the centuries and the steed that time and history had built. Samson was a tried-and-true American wild Mustang and he had made his herd proud.

  So when I thought of Samson and his proud and prideful ways, I found myself saying, Why not?

  Samson was no longer maladjusted, no longer socially dysfunctional, and no longer hateful, but when I looked at him I still saw sadness, darkness, and despair. I pictured the thousands of Indian buffalo-catchers and painted war ponies dispatched under the aim of cavalry rifles. I envisioned the endless array of wild horses who had their tendons sliced by trip wires and eyes shot out by Mustanger bullets. I thought of every Mustang who suffered at slaughter to fill canned tins. I closed my eyes, but all I could see was pain, suffering, and death.

  All I could see was the forever damaged and hardened, hated, abused, victimized, and brutalized Mustang horse.

  As Samson slowly patrolled the perimeter fence line, I gazed at his freeze mark and thought of all the Mustangs the BLM had chased, culled, and captured. I saw horses at trap sites consumed with frenzied fear and once-spirited wild Mustangs standing spiritless in BLM mud lots. I pictured all the wild horses who were adopted by unscrupulous buyers and inexperienced horse owners, jammed into stock trucks, and shipped off to slaughter. And, I saw the cursed horse, the allegedly protected free-roaming modern-day wild Mustang that has been the target of countless unlawful, random, and sadistic acts of terror in a decades-long sportless hunt.

  Samson wasn’t just a historic and majestic steed; he was also the long forgotten and hated wild horse of the West. He was the horse that has survived centuries of inclement weather and millions of years of predation only to continually fall victim to man—his greatest predator. Decades’ worth of scientific research has exonerated him of a major role in rangeland degradation and resource depletion, yet he has remained loathed and despised. Through no fault of his own, he has spent a lifetime misunderstood and mistreated where pain, suffering, and hardship was his one true constant. His fight to survive was indeed an epic battle to persevere.