Round-Ups

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Last summer in Idaho, I watched the BLM do a wild horse round-up, just up the road from where I had been staying all summer. I was very hesitant about it, as the whole idea of it turned my stomach. Then the trucks and trailers rolled down the road. My friend Bonnie and I followed up the road. We were only a few that observed what was about to happen, for they did not want people out there. We knew someone that gave us the info on where the round-up would take place that day.

It was something that I am sure, as time passes, will impact my life more than I realize. We climbed the hillside and watched as the helicopter slowly pushed the horses ... stallions, mares, and foals, down the rocky hillside towards the funnel they had set up with fencing ... and the cowboys waited to push them into the holding pens ... my heart was crying ... then a stallion jumped a 6 ft. fence ... from a dead standstill … uphill … and to my heart's delight escaped ... I am sure he was already exhausted from the round-up ... but what heart and spirit he had ... pushed him on ... to freedom ... For a short moment my heart and soul cheered him on. Then the next group was pushed into the pens; again, one of the stallions tried the same thing ... he caught a leg, and hung there for what seemed to me, an eternity ... I could no longer watch ... I held my head in my hands until I heard the gunshot that gave him freedom ... he was not going to be caught ... Numb, tears rolling down our faces, we climbed off that hill.

When the man who was running the operation came over to us, he clearly was shaken, told us how awful he felt. I could only express what was in me. I told him that I did not have a lot of money, but I would buy some plywood and fix those fences, so that it would never happen again. I said that with all the resources and technology that the US government had available, there was surely a method that a wild horse, trying to jump out of a pen he was held captive in, would not break a leg and have to die ... There has to be a better way ... a solution ... please direct me if you can to someone that could help prevent this from ever happening again...

-Golde

Reproduction authorized solely for educational purposes, provided
www.wildhorsepreservation.org is credited as source.