Book Review: Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs: The Life of Velma Johnston

Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs: The Life of Velma Johnston
by David Cruise & Alison Griffiths

If you've read Marguerite Henry's Mustang: Wild Spirit of the West, then you have some passing familiarity with the story of the American mustangs and with Velma Johnston, the Nevadan housewife who made it her personal crusade to save them.

If that's all you've read about the preservation battle behind the mustang, then you've only got a quarter of the story. This book is a superb way to get the rest of it.

Velma Johnston was born in small-town Reno, Nevada. Stricken with polio at an early age, she grew up solitary, smart, and driven. She spent her entire life in pain from post-polio syndrome and facing a world that judged her harshly for the hunched back and misshapen face that polio left behind.

One of the biggest strengths of this book is its unflinching, compassionate look into Velma's life, achieved through a deep dive into her personal papers - tens of thousands of pages of letters, primarily. The Velma you get to know through this book would have initially said she was happiest as a successful executive secretary to the owner of a real estate business and a ranch wife.

The trajectory of her life changed when she followed a truck dripping blood to discover that it was full of badly injured and dying mustangs. She and her husband Charlie were gradually drawn into a life of activism as they started finding and releasing mustangs that had been rounded up for dog food, then networking to stop roundups before they started. Soon, Velma was the central figure in a widening campaign to ban mustang roundups by airplane.

The book doesn't shy away from the cruelties inflicted on mustangs, and it does a good job of dispassionately presenting the various arguments for and against the mustang. It's perhaps a bit light on the history of the mustangs (a little more time spent on parsing the difference between "wild" and "feral," and the different emotional weights to each, would have given context to one of the main points of disagreement between mustang activists and cattle men), but gives a pretty decent overview of the ecological challenges of the Western ranges.

As someone who knew the broad outlines of the story, I found this telling of it to be superb. It was tightly and engagingly written, well-researched, and had a strong narrative and tight focus on Velma herself. Nor did it shy away from Velma's failings and character flaws, particularly in her dealings with photographer Gus Bundy and then in her relationship with Marguerite Henry (which began warmly but grew overly emotional and difficult). The section dealing with Henry was actually one of the best in the book, since it allowed both for a grounding of the broader story and for a reflection on Velma's life and character.

While it presents both sides fairly, the book can probably be said to have a point of view that is pro-mustang. The Bureau of Land Management doesn't come off terribly well, though all of the most damning material is simple statements of fact and quotes from BLM officials. (The authors acknowledge this in a note at the end.)

University of Reno - Nevada, Special Collections

Ultimately, the last chapter after Velma's death is the most unsatisfying; she passed away just in the midst of the architecture of wild horse management as we know it today, with its inherent contradictions and fatal flaws. It's especially depressing because she fought for a comprehensive scientific range management from the start, and never saw that urgently needed piece of the puzzle realized. Without thoughtful, objective study, it was inevitable that we get to the place we are now, where no one can even agree on the number of mustangs in the West, much less how they actually use the range and how to effectively balance the needs of the flora and fauna.

In that last chapter, Cruise & Griffiths bring the fight quickly up to date and touch on the process of adoption and the regular Congressional attempts to round up mustangs for slaughter again. They also point out how deeply unsatisfying Velma herself would've found the holding pen system, in which thousands of mustangs are rounded up and simply transferred from the range and pastured on private land, paid for by tax dollars.

Despite its muddy ending, this is a really terrific book. I'm very picky about my narrative nonfiction: the writing has to be good, the interpretation deft, and the research solid. This ticks all of those boxes. I generally have even less patients for topics I already have a background in, but this holds up to that test as well. I genuinely couldn't put it down.

If you're looking for a thoughtful read about horses and history, I strongly recommend this. If you want to understand more about mustangs and how we've reached this point in our national discourse about them, it's essential reading.

Blog Hop: Bloodlines

I'm a horrible person, because I can't remember the exact name people are using for this blog hop but...I keep reading these really neat posts about equine bloodlines, from OTTBs to all sorts of other breeds and I'm over here, like...well, Tristan definitely has ancestors?

Fun game: cover up his freezebrand, put him in front of people, and say, "what breed?" Then watch their faces. I've gotten Andalusian, Morgan, Quarter Horse, Thoroughbred, the list goes on. (No one has ever guessed "dachshund" sadly.)

It's funny because what even is going on there with that conformation? sigh.

So I thought I'd link to a few posts I've done before about where he comes from, which is as close to tracking his bloodlines as I'll ever get.

Blog Hop: History of a Horse - about the Callaghan HMA where he was rounded up

Rescuing Wild Mustangs in Maine - about Tristan's rescue, and how we met

How to Identify and Read a Bureau of Land Management Freezebrand - just for kicks

My favorite internet game: BLM adoption photos!

I am not really one for window shopping horses online. I can count on one hand the number of times I've browsed Dreamhorse. I occasionally look at listings for Lippitt Morgans and just shake my head. I don't even really look at flyer at the local farm stores.

I do make one giant exception: the BLM Wild Horse & Burro Online Adoption galleries.

Mustangs, you guys. Even though I stumbled into them, apparently they have a giant hold on my heart.

So here's my favorite game: who would you take home?

Here's the online gallery to browse through. Comment with the number of and/or link to your picks!

Right now, I'm loving #5641

#3904

And I am head over heels for #5696.

For Your Consideration: #GivingTuesday at Ever After Mustang Rescue

I've written before about Tristan's rescue, mostly here and here. It remains a place near and dear to my heart because it gave me my best friend, and because it is a place where good people do good work.

Today is Giving Tuesday, as those of us in the nonprofit world know well. The time between Thanksgiving and New Year's is the busiest time of the year for fundraising. People are feeling more generous around the holidays and the more practical among them are looking at their impending tax filings.

So, on this Tuesday after the shopping and spending orgy that was the long weekend, many are considering giving back to their communities.

I will be making a donation to Ever After Mustang Rescue to support their work in rescuing and retraining mustangs.

Here's my twist.

Please comment on this post today with a horse-related nonprofit that you support. Even better, tell me that you've donated to that organization.

For each comment, I will donate an additional $5 to Ever After Mustang Rescue. (Up to a reasonable amount, I do still have a horse.)

So: let me know where you will be supporting with your donations today, or where you have supported in the past. (Last year, I did a roundup of horse-related charities; you can find it here.)

(I did think about making additional donations to the organizations you all support but the logistics started to scramble my brain. Maybe next year.)

Tristan's Scariest Scar

Tristan was a wild horse for four years in central Nevada. I wrote a little bit about where he came from here: the Callaghan Herd Management Area.

After that, he was in BLM custody for two years. After that, he was in an adoptive home for two years. Then he was relocated to the rescue for two years. Then he came to me.

At some point prior to coming to me, he acquired a really scary scar.

His roan coloring means that scars show up as darker spots against his coat. See just above his hock? That dark line along the tendon?

The picture doesn't show it very well, but it's actually a semi-circle, There's a matching one on the other side. Those are teeth marks.

Have you ever seen a horse - a boss mare, usually - herd other horses, head snaked down low, teeth bared? It's the equine body language equivalent of MOVE RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.

My best guess is that at some point Tristan did not move fast enough, and another horse bit him, just above the hock, on either side of that tendon. Badly enough to go through the skin, and then heal so that it left a pretty big scar.

He has never - knock wood - been lame on that leg, so it obviously healed. But can you imagine the perfect series of circumstances that had to occur so that an injury that gnarly healed without any lasting damage - in the wild?

Elisa Wallace & mustangs

I posted a video on Sunday of Elisa Wallace doing a mustang demo at Rolex, and then the Chronicle re-linked to this really lovely interview they did with her before her debut at Rolex.

This quote in particular stuck out to me:

You get addicted to the process and the journey that you go through with them. There is a certain sense of magic that’s a little bit different with them. I just really enjoy working with them and I’ve just become really passionate about them. It’s something I never thought I’d be spearheading, as far as being an ambassador and doing what I’m doing, but I really enjoy it and I really think there are some nice horses out there that should be given a chance. They love the job. They’re like any horse that likes to jump and compete, if you find one they’ll give you everything.

I mean, not every mustang loves his job, but yeah. They're horses.  And with them, it really is all about the journey. It has to be. Going into a relationship with a mustang with hard-and-fast goal is a crapshoot. They're not like a finely bred dressage machine, which has generations of breeding and conformation and environment telling it to be a certain thing. They are scrappy little mutts who behave as wild prey animals.

The director of the rescue I got Tristan from, whom I worked with for a summer, always said that you should go into everything with a mustang assuming it will take all the time you have, and then some. There are no quick lessons. There is bricklaying, backbreaking foundation work, over and over and over and over again.

I always tell people that the thing I'm most proud of with Tristan is not any of our riding accomplishments (which are paltry at best) but that he trusts me, and lets me lead him, and groom him. He seeks me out affectionately. That he went from wild animal to sweetheart still amazes me.

GO MUSTANGS GO

(side note, there used to be an upper level event mustang named Must Tango. Get it? Must-tango?)

TOA Blog Hop: History of the Horse

From The Owls Approve: Before you met, where was your horse? Who bred him/her? What do you know about his sire and his dam? What do you know where he came from? Tell me about the time before he had a trainer.

So, where did Tristan come from? This is actually a complicated story, and the part of it that I think is most interesting to blog about is the very beginning.

Let's hit the rewind button quickly. Before he came to me, Tristan was at a rescue in southern Maine. Before that, he was in the custody of the state of New York after being seized as part of an animal cruelty investigation. Before that, he was on a farm in upstate New York alongside a few dozen other horses, some of them alive, and some of them dead. Most of them dead. Before that, he was in various places across the United States, various large and small holding pens as the gears of the government system ground on.

Before that?

Tristan was born in central Nevada in 1995, in a remote desert area at the foothills of the Toiyabe mountain range. It's a decent guess that he was born in spring, and stayed with his dam for a few months - maybe up to a year, even. In the wild, horses travel in a variety of different kinship groups. Foals are born into family bands, groups of mares and sometimes adolescent stallions, owned or guarded over by one, sometimes two, stallions.

Bachelor herd.

By the time he was a long yearling, Tristan had probably moved on to a bachelor herd. Maybe he left on his own; maybe he was chased off by his dam, ready to drop another foal; maybe he was chased off by his sire, or by another stallion who had taken over his family band. It's nearly impossible to know.

Gather in the Callaghan HMA, 2010

Tristan ranged with that bachelor herd for nearly three years, until one day in February 1999, when he was rounded up and gathered by the Bureau of Land Management, or by a contractor working for the BLM. He was herded into pens with other members of his bachelor herd, gelded, freezebranded, and given basic vaccines and a Coggins test. (His first proof of vaccine lists an entire page of mustangs, the freezebrand numbers before and after his own; cousins? brothers? friends? or some mixup of horses from different herds that all ended up in the same pen at the same time? who knows?) Then he was shipped east, and the story I relayed above began.

I've done a lot of research over the years to find out what Tristan's life was like growing up. Thanks to his gather paperwork, we know he was part of a 1999 gather from the Callaghan Herd Management Area. The BLM divides the public lands where mustangs range into these herd management areas, which are then grouped together in district offices. Callaghan is part of the Battle Mountain District Office. It is close to the Ravenswood, Bald Mountain, New Pass, and Rocky Hills Herd Management Areas. Together, these HMAs consist of 640,148 acres around Austin, Nevada.

Austin is marked here; dead center in Nevada, and on the edges of the Toiyabe National Forest.

Here's what the BLM says about Callaghan (source): 

The Callaghan HMA is located northeast of the town of Austin, Nevada and encompasses over 156,230 acres of public land. The HMA is approximately 27 miles long and 16 miles wide. The entire Callaghan HMA lies in Lander County at the north end of the Toiyabe Mountain Range.

The Toiyabe Mountain Range in Lander County, NV

Topography/vegetation: The proposed gather area is located within Central Nevada within the Great Basin. Much of the rangeland at lower elevations consists of salt desert shrub and Wyoming big sagebrush communities. Pinyon and Juniper are prevalent in the mid and upper elevations. Precipitation averages 6-10 inches per year in the valleys and up to 16+ inches in the mountains. Drought conditions may occur 1 out of every 3-4 years. These HMAs are comprised of north/south trending mountain ranges surrounded by wide valley bottoms. Perennial streams are infrequent, and most waters consist of small springs, ponds and wells or springs developed to include pipelines and troughs. 

Another view of the Toiyabe Mountain Range, from the valley floor.

Wildlife: Within the proposed project area, numerous species of wildlife occur. Mule deer, pronghorn antelope, mountain lions, coyotes, and bobcats are the main game and fur bearing species present. Chukar, California quail, morning doves, and cottontail rabbits constitute the major upland game species. In addition, a variety of non-game mammals, birds, and reptiles occur in the project area. Very common shrub nesting species include the sage thrasher, sage sparrow, Brewer’s sparrow, horned lark and meadow lark. The loggerhead shrike, common nighthawk, various wrens, warblers, larks and swallows are all common. . Species that nest in aspen communities include the northern goshawk, broad-tailed hummingbird, northern flicker, house wren, American robin, warbling vireo, yellow-rumped warbler, junco, western wood pewee, lazuli bunting, and western tanager. Common reptilian wildlife in the Complex includes collared lizard, Great Basin fence lizard, northern sagebrush lizard, horned lizard, Great Basin whiptail, Great Basin gopher snake, and Great Basin rattlesnake.

Horse Colors: These HMAs support wild horses that exhibit the full spectrum of colors of wild horses including the most common colors of bay, brown, sorrel and black, but also include the more brilliant colors of palomino, grulla, pinto, roan and Appaloosa.

Size of Horses: Wild horses within these HMAs average 14-15 hands in height and weigh 900-1,100 pounds as adults.

History: Wild horses in these areas are traced back to domestic ranch horses used for ranching, transportation and mining when the areas were settled. Genetic analysis indicates that these horses are similar to domestic breeds with indications of Light Racing and Riding Breeds, North American Gaited Breeds, Morgan, Old Spanish, Old World Iberian and Oriental Breeds. The genetic variability of all of these herds is high and no signs of inbreeding are present in the genetics analysis.

This page has a great selection of horses from the different HMAs in the Battle Mountain District, and suggests that Callaghan horses tend to be colorful and leggier, due to Thoroughbred influence on the breeding stock, which fits with the BLM's genetic analysis. Tristan is 15 hands, 15.1 in shoes, and is actually on the tall side for a mustang - many of them hover around 14 hands. There are clear Spanish influences in his head and neck, and his aptitude for cross-country and jumping (though sadly not his overall athletic ability) is much higher than the average mustang, which may also point to TB. On a fun note, the Pony Express went through Austin, NV, which was a lonely mining outpost. Maybe Tristan has some ancestors who were stringer horses for the Pony Express? It's possible!

Rescuing Wild Mustangs in Maine

Ten years ago, I graduated from college and moved to southern Maine to live with family for the summer. Lacking in funds but in need of horse time, I followed my aunt's recommendation and called up Ever After Mustang Rescue and offered myself as a volunteer. I had some rescue experience, and a decent amount of horse experience.

I met Mona Jerome on the first day and quickly learned that she was one of the most dedicated, intuitive horsewomen I had ever seen. She had an eye and a quietness about her that was truly extraordinary. Any ground handling and training skills I have today are due to the summer I spent under her tutelage.

Midway through that summer, I was given a horse nicknamed "Big Red" as a training project. I taught him to stand to be groomed, pick up his feet, accept a saddle, and gave him half a dozen rides under saddle. When I left Maine for my job in Vermont that fall, I missed him desperately.

The rest, as they say, is history. Mona and her husband Brad hauled my new horse - renamed Tristan - to me on January 2 and my adventure began.

I tell you this because I recently came across a wonderful article about Mona and her work, and I wanted to share a little bit of my background with her.

Enjoy the article: Rescuing Wild Mustangs in Maine

Viva Carlos Blog Hop: Interested Parties

What made you interested in your current horse that led you to buying them in the first place?

Fun question! With a semi-interesting answer for me.

The summer after I graduated from college, I moved down to Maine to live with family for the summer to do something different. I had a job as a cashier at a convenience store on the beach for the summer season, which did not pay nearly enough to continue riding lessons.

So I asked around and found a nearby horse rescue and began volunteering my time: Ever After Mustang Rescue.

I started mucking stalls and doing general cleaning, and moved on to handling horses. We rode some of the older non-mustang, completely-broke horses when we had time, but mostly it was ground work boot camp: how many of these horses can we teach to stay calm while brushed, lead like good citizens, pick up their feet, and in general be civilized domestic ponies? The mustangs there ranged from just in from the wild to some who had been living domestically for years but still had zero training to show for it.

Midway through the summer, a rich woman visited and decided she was going to adopt about a half dozen mustangs and bring them to her land so she could look at them out the window and, I don't know, get a sense of 'Murica and freedom or something. She had staff come and look at horses and choose the ones she wanted.

One of those was a red roan gelding that everyone called "Big Red" because at 15 hands with good bone, he was one of the largest horses on the property. (Mustangs run small!) He was very flashy and had a cute face, which fit the lady's criteria for what she wanted to look at every day.

So I was assigned Red, who could not be handled in any way shape or form: could not be touched, could not be groomed, was moved from place to place (like several other horses) by the expediency of closing off some doors & gates, opening others, and herding him.

Many, many hours and weeks later, I had a nice little horse with pretty decent manners. I started him under saddle, and right about that time the rich lady changed her mind. Red was going to stay at the rescue. I did about five rides with him in a sidepull and old saddle, including one in the open, and at the end of the summer kissed his nose and headed off to the job I had lined up for September back in Vermont.

Except, I had fallen in love with him. And the horse I'd been leasing for years went finally, irreversibly, unsound. And I started number-crunching and pondering Ramen noodles.

So I made the call, and after a $150 donation to the rescue, Red - now named Tristan - came to me on January 2, in the dead of winter, and became mine.

In large part, I lucked out. I did not have nearly as much experience in evaluating a horse to have gotten the horse I did on skill. I knew that he was essentially good-natured, very smart, decently athletic, and very handsome. I knew how we worked together, and that his basic ground manners were good. I had the confidence from my summer at the rescue to continue to develop his ground work.

I would go about choosing a horse very, VERY differently these days, but I do not regret the way Tristan came to me.

Book Review: Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West

Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West
by Deanne Stillman
(available on Amazon)

First things first: this was not the book I thought it was. I picked it up out of curiosity - it had quite a few accolades on the cover, was by a talented writer, and in all honesty I began it with a sinking heart. For some years now, I have had in mind the project of researching and writing a book about the place the mustang holds in the American imagination.

This was not that book. This was not even close to that book. In fact? This was not really a book about mustangs at all, save for perhaps the last 1/4 of it.

That's not to say it was a bad book, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it was quite a good book: well-written, thoughtful, far-ranging, and a good read. Here was my biggest problem: this book made no attempt to define or distinguish the "mustang," which is to say the distinctly wild (or feral) horse that lives without human interaction or mediation in the American west.

Stillman's title and subtitle imply that she will write a history of those horses. That's not what she did. Instead, this book is more accurately a history of the horse in general in the American west. Which is fine! She does a nice light nonfiction job of that, telling stories about the horses belonging to early conquistadors, about cavalry horses, about cow ponies and cattle drives, about the horses in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, about movie horses. She clearly (despite her personal history) doesn't know a whole lot about horses, but she does know a whole lot about people, and does a really nice job in telling her stories.

So while I spent the first 3/4 of the book annoyed at her lack of distinction (mustang != any horse out west != free-roaming stock horses != any horse that she has decided fits a certain physical type), when I forced myself to step back and think "this is really about horses as companions in creating the history of the west" I liked the book much much better.

And then when she spends the last 1/4 actually talking about mustangs, actually parsing out the history of the wild/feral horses in the west in the mid to latter part of the 20th century? She does a really good job. Instead of an enjoyable but not gripping read it became a gripping and depressing and involved read. I couldn't put down the last 80 pages. It took me 2 weeks to read the first 240.

And in the end? I'm glad she didn't write the book I wanted to write, because that means it's still out there for me to tackle.

How to Identify and Read a Bureau of Land Management Freeze Brand

When I introduce people to Tristan, they always seem surprised that he's a mustang. Fortunately, he has permanent proof of his ancestry in the form of a freeze brand on his neck. All mustangs that have been rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as part of an approved gather are given a freeze brand on the left side of their neck, just below the mane and about 6-12 inches below the ears.

What is freeze branding? Many people are familiar - from the movies, if nothing else - with hot branding: heating a piece of iron and then applying it to an animal's skin. The brand burns through hair and then into skin, creating an outline of scar tissue in whatever shape is necessary: a ranch's ID, for example, or a number. In horses, the most common are breed association brands. There's a good list of them on the NetPosse website. It's not a painless process, but it is relatively quick and very common.

In freeze branding, the iron is super-frozen using liquid nitrogen, dry ice, or some other chemical coolant. When held to an animal, instead of burning through to the skin, it kills the pigment-producing part of the animal's hair, and leaves the hair white in the shape of the brand. They are slower to work - you have to hold the brand on longer to get the desired result, and they don't appear immediately, but rather as the hair grows in. It's less painful (some resources say totally painless) but trickier: because you have to hold the iron for longer, there's a chance of smudging.

In America, only range-gathered BLM mustangs have a consistent system of freeze branding. (In Australia and New Zealand, Thoroughbreds & Standardbreds are marked with freeze brands.) This is not to say that if you see a horse with a freeze brand, it's automatically a BLM mustang. Some owners choose to freeze brand their horses (usually in different locations and with a different system). Some mustangs are never freeze branded (if they were born in captivity, for example).

BLM mustangs are freeze branded on the left side of their neck, about an inch or two below the crest, and about 6" below the ears. There's no precise measurement (Tristan's is further down than 6" for sure, and I've seen some much closer than 6"), but if you see a horse with a freeze brand near the crest on the left side of their neck, you're probably looking at a BLM horse.

Every BLM freeze brand is unique. They're meant as a permanent identifier of an individual mustang. Knowing how to read them can tell you a lot about the animal you're looking at. There are three basic parts to any freeze brand. Here's a good breakdown:

"Registration Organization" in this case is always the same: US Government. That peculiar sort of LC at the beginning of this diagram is the government-specific ID. So that's another clue that you're looking at a BLM mustang. (There are ID marks for other breeds and states, by the way, but I've never seen one in person.) But what do the angles and lines mean - how are those translated into numbers?

The BLM uses something called the "International Identification System" which they all the "International Alpha Angle System." It was developed by Veterinary Cryobiologist (really!) R. Keith Farrell of Washington State University (along with a few others, such as an FBI agent and a few people from breed associations) and first published in the Journal of Forensic Science in January 1981. (Here's the abstract.) 

Basically, Professor Farrell was trying to promote an international system of identification for horses that could be registered and tracked in order to prevent crime. His argument was that commonly used identifiers such as color, whorls, chestnuts, and other markings were unscientific and imprecise. He proposed his alternate angle system as a way to get everyone on the same page. As you can guess, it hasn't really caught on widely in horse circles - have you ever seen a non-BLM horse with one? Kryo Kinetics USA LLC tries to carry on that work today, and will register your horse for you if you choose to have it freezebranded.

Anyway, enough history. What do the angles stand for? It's a very simple system.

So let's look again at the freeze brand above, this time deciphered using the angle system:

Ta-da! We're looking at a BLM mustang that was born in 1981 (the first year they began using the angle system, incidentally) with a registration number of 031987. There's one more step to learning more about this particular animal, though. The BLM assigns registration numbers according to the state the mustang was gathered from.

Arizona 80001-160000	California 160001-240000
Colorado 240001-320000	Idaho 320001-400000
Montana 400001-480000	Nevada 480001-640000
New Mexico 640001-720000	Oregon 0-80000
Utah 720001-800000	Wyoming 800001-880000
Eastern States 880001-880100

So, armed with that information we know we're looking at a BLM mustang that was born in 1981 and rounded up in Oregon. In theory, the BLM should also maintain a database of the horses they gather, and should be able to tell you when a particular horse was rounded up based on its registration number. In practice, good luck getting them to answer your phone calls. (I've generally found them unresponsive in the extreme.)

What does this look like on actual horses? Let's use my own wild pony as an example!

Yeah, not as easy, is it? I'll grant you that this photo doesn't help, but I'll also tell you that it's not that much easier to tell in person. In fact, since he was shipped to me, I haven't clipped down to the skin on his neck to get a good clear look at his brand. This photo was taken a few days after he arrived. You could argue that this is the best it will get. His roaning makes the numbers blur into the hair around them. Beyond maybe a flea-bitten gray horse, roans are the toughest on which to distinguish freezemarks.

The first few are easy. There's that government LC, right up front. Then the year, 95.

Then the next two are straightforward: 5 and 5. In better light, you can tell the next one, too: it's an 8.

After that? Honestly, the next two are kind of a blur to me, too. The last one is easy again: another 5.

I'll take a shortcut and tell you that his full, registered, identification number is 95558535. He was foaled in 1995, and rounded up in Nevada, per that 55 number which is smack in the middle of Nevada's range. (Some vast majority of all mustangs still wild in the west today are in Nevada, so Tris is a pretty typical example.)

That's all the freeze brand will tell you. You can, in theory, go back to the BLM and ask them for more information. If they're feeling generous they can look up more for you, like potentially the gather (or roundup) information, maybe the original title holder. Again - I've never been able to get much out of them. (I have more information on Tris that I'll share at a future date, but I have that because of the paperwork that came with him, not because of 

But this is a start. Let's look at one more freeze brand that's an easier read. (Taken from a random Google Image search; I don't know this horse personally.)

Much easier, huh?

So this one: 97 year of birth, followed by 566684. Another Nevada horse.

So now you know. Google Image search for "BLM freeze brand" to your heart's content and learn about the mustangs that come up, or impress horse people at cocktail parties, or maybe put that knowledge to good use someday when someone needs to know more about a horse they're looking at.

Any questions? Anything else I can shed light on?

Lazy by Design

Stacey at Behind the Bit linked to this article from Equus Magazine, which is a roundup of interesting tests done on horses to see what they prefer.

This line in particular stuck out to me:

One horse chose to exercise on the treadmill on two out of three of his trials. While that one horse may have had some predilection for exercise, the overwhelming preference was for “absolutely no exercise.”

 Of course, working on a treadmill is very different from running free. But this result does correlate with how horses behave in nature. Feral horses spend less than 1 percent of their time moving more quickly than a walk, and they pick up their pace in only one situation: when they are being chased.

Tristan says "I FREAKING TOLD YOU SO, CRAZY LADY. I will go willingly forward when there is a mountain lion in the ring with us, and NOT ONE SECOND BEFORE THEN."

JB Andrews, 1986-2011

I can't remember who first told me about JB Andrew. Probably someone who saw me valiantly trying to teach my little mutt of a mustang to go on the bit and wanted to give me inspiration. But I went home and read all about him, and over the years I followed him from afar. I told people all about him when they seemed surprised that my mustang can be a dressage horse.

Last week, I did an idle internet search for the first time in a long time and found out that JB Andrews died 18 months ago. I'll admit it: I broke down and cried at my desk. At work. At lunch, but still. Ack.

Who was JB Andrews, you may ask? Arguably the most successful BLM mustang of all time. When people talk about BLM mustangs succeeding in traditional sporthorse disciplines, they talk about Andy first - and then they talk about all the other mustangs.

He was captured as a weanling out of a herd in Nevada in 1985, and he was started in a prison program in Colorado - "JB" stands for "Jailbird." His first owner, Ginger Scott, noted that he had some dressage talent and soon a friend of hers named Kelly O'Leary (later Boyd) got the ride.

By 1994, at age 9, he made his debut at Prix St. Georges. He and Kelly trained with Jan Ebeling, and he had matured to an astonishingly large 16.3 hands with size 5 feet. (To give you some context, Tristan is on the high end of average size at 15.1 hands. They are wild animals, who don't often grow to typical domestic sizes.) He wasn't rocking the whole world, but he was competitive and successful, and appeared on national leaderboards.

In 1997, he became the first mustang to appear at Dressage at Devon (and for a long time the only, until Padre was entered as an in-hand stallion).

By 1999, at 14 years old, Andy was showing at Intermediaire II and schooling the Grand Prix movements and tests. He would never make his show ring debut at that level, however, due to deteriorating hocks. He was retired to pasture in 2000.

It's not clear to me what exactly he died of, but an article mentions that a malignant carcinoma was found behind his eye in 2009, so it seems safe to assume that's what ended his life.

Rest in peace, big beautiful boy. You continue to inspire me and so many others.

JB Andrew at Kelly Boyd's website
Eurodressage Profile: JB Andrew
JB Andrew: Mustang Magic (book at Amazon.com)

All the Wild Horses

This article from Pro Publica is one of the most depressing things I've read in a long time. It exposes precisely what wild horse advocates have been saying for years: the current round up system is overloaded and broken, and thousands of wild horses are simply being taken from the wild with no clear end goal in sight.

It's bad enough that there are now more mustangs in holding pens than in the wild, but this article offers incotrovertible proof that the BLM is turning a deliberate blind eye to at least one man who is buying horses wholesale and selling them to slaughter.

Here's the thing: I have no fundamental problem with horse slaughter as a concept. They are livestock animals that are difficult and expensive to keep, and ending their lives in a quick manner is far kinder than letting them waste away in pain for years. However, the way slaughter is often done - shipping on overcrowded trailers, using the captive bolt system which has been proven inhumane for horses - is not okay.

What's even worse, however, is the logic of the current wildlife management system the BLM is pursuing. Think about it: does the federal government round up deer and put them in holding pens? Is a sensible wildlife management policy one that simply rounds up wild animals and holds them en masse? The argument is that they'd die in the wild; well, yes, they would. That's what happens to wild animals, sometimes horribly. It's life. It makes me sad, but it's a reality that the BLM would be better to go along with rather than thwart.

Death in the Wild

Life with Tristan continues apace. Dressage school last night in the back field, working on keeping a good forward rhythm no matter what, and controlling the shoulders in the canter.

Today I'm thinking about another horse-related project that has been brewing in the back of my mind for a long time. In my day job, I'm an historian and museum worker, and just completed a Master's degree in history and museum studies. I study military history, and made the switch to nineteenth-century American when I did my graduate work. My thesis was about the early days of the First Dragoons, and in doing that I became fascinated by the patterns and intricacies of life in the American West.

My next project - to begin in earnest in the fall, after giving myself a summer of from school work for the first time in years - will be about perceptions of the mustang through history. I'll be documenting that blog at my other history/professional blog, Amblering.

In that vein, I read a blog post today that fascinated and touched me and reminded me that there is so much more going on inside my little mustang's head than I will ever really know about. He was four when he came off the range; he'd lived a rich and varied and intense life. Someday I'll post a picture of the scar above his right hock, perfect teeth marks on either side of the big tendon there.

Barbara Wheeler is an equine photographer who specializes in mustangs; I've loved her Facebook updates for months now, and she wrote this detailed account of the death (euthanizing, more properly) of a herd stallion, and the social dynamics among the herds that accompanied his fall.

I'm not sure I agree with the actions she and others took to humanely euthanize this stallion - life in the wild is cruel, and painful, and I have never been one to cry over the plight of mustangs living a perfectly natural, if violent and short, lives. What's done is done, however, and I appreciate the keen observation she brought to the situation.