When my husband Michael and I moved from British Columbia to California for his work, I had no idea that a few short years later, I would be living in wild horse country in the mountains outside of Reno, Nevada. I certainly could not have imagined that once there, I would end up adopting an ancient, special-needs wild stallion, nor could I ever have envisioned how many important lessons a horse that many people saw as “useless” had to teach me.
Our neighbourhood is an amazing place where bands of wild horses roam at will, and you get so used to seeing them grazing, resting, playing and fighting all over the place that they become simply part of the scenery. “Ranger” stood out, however, as from the first moment I saw him, it was evident that this little bay stallion was in serious trouble. While the other mustangs in the area were vibrantly healthy and almost chubby after a particularly lush spring, Ranger was far too thin, his head hung down as if he didn’t have the strength to lift it, his eyes were crusty, saliva dripped from his mouth and he had several small swellings around his throat.
I spent some time watching him from a distance and observed that he was unable to chew any forage at all (he would try, but would inevitably spit it back out in wads), and he seemed to be barely surviving by eating dried horse manure. This, along with the drooling and odd lumps, led me to believe there must be something wrong in his mouth or throat. Knowing what a slow and cruel death starvation is for a horse, I called the Nevada Department of Agriculture (NDA) and got permission for myself and several other volunteers to capture Ranger, the hope being that we could figure out what was wrong with him, fix the problem, then release him back onto the range.