4. Safe

Sandy called again the very next morning to ask if I could come get the colt now, as in yesterday.

The hoarder was making threats, the elderly landowners were backpedaling their support, and law enforcement was equivocating.

Now or never, she didn’t say, but that’s what I heard.

There wouldn’t be time to prep my round corral or refine my landing plan like I’d hoped.

I gobbled an early lunch, hitched up the old Circle J, and made the long drive back to the rescue site less than 24 hours after I first laid eyes on the colt.

***

The backyard scene, all peace and love the day before, was now swarming with activity.

Parked cars crowded the lawn and idling trucks and horse trailers lined the gravel drive.

Volunteers directed traffic, sorted paperwork, and wheeled bales of hay to the waiting rigs.

The horses milled about in tight circles, calling frantically to one another across the corrals.

It was orderly chaos: focus and calm on the part of the people, complete upheaval in the lives of the animals.

I signed the transfer papers and headed over to the staging area where Sandy’s crew had set up a series of panel pens to separate the horses for transport.

A pair of cowboys drove the horses one by one through a chute and into the waiting trailers.

The colt was already in one of the pens, pacing the fence line closest to his mother.

I saw his concern and felt my stomach clench.

Suddenly Sandy was at my side.

You’re next, she said, go get your rig.

It was all happening a little too fast for me and way too fast, I was sure, for the colt.

When you remove an animal from dire conditions, you rejoice in thinking how much better its life will be thenceforth.

But that’s not how it feels to the animal, especially not to my little mustang, who’d never known any different.

All his life the colt had lived among a warm press of bodies, rubbing shoulders with kith and kin, never more than a few feet from his mother’s side, following her every move.

He’d felt pain, hunger, thirst, and cold, but never once had he been alone.

The herd meant safety to the colt, and safety means everything to a horse: more than food, more than freedom.

Separation, isolation, would feel life-threatening.

This rescue, this act of mercy, would to him spell mortal peril.

The colt went into the trailer pretty quietly, not knowing there’d be no way out.

But when the doors swung shut, he panicked.

He pawed with his feet and pushed with his nose; nothing gave.

He stuck his head out one of the windows, but the rest of his body could not fit through it.

He called to his mother over and over, and she called back.

But he couldn’t get to her, and she didn’t come get him.

He was trapped!

Then the trap started to move; can you imagine?

It creaked and groaned and swayed, throwing the colt off balance.

He had to tense all of his muscles just to stay upright.

Gravel popped like buckshot under his feet; then came the eerie whine of pavement.

The colt kept his eyes trained on his mother, her figure shrinking in the rear window.

The terrible distance between him and his family grew.

The trailer rounded a bend, and his herd vanished.

He was alone.

The noisy trap shook and shuddered over bumps in the road.

At every curve the colt stumbled and tilted against the walls.

Then the trailer straightened and gained speed, and everything got worse.

Wind roared through the windows and semis rushed past inches from his face.

The sound was louder, the movement faster than anything he’d ever experienced before.

The colt wanted to run for his life, but any shift in his weight made him stagger.

So he held himself very still.

The terror, the tension, were exhausting, and went on and on.

Finally the trailer slowed and the rush of sound receded.

Through the windows he saw woods and fields and water, but no sign of his herd.

There was a tight turn, the crackling of gravel, a reversal, the trailer lurching and heaving over rough terrain.

As soon as the movement stopped he called for his mother.

He called again, and again, and again.

She didn’t answer; instead came a chorus of unfamiliar voices.

He scanned the fields and the horizon; she wasn’t there.

When at last the doors swung open, his herd–his mother, his father, his family and friends–were nowhere to be seen.

The colt had no idea of what he should do about his situation.

He’d never made a move on his own: never ventured into unknown territory, never stepped down from an uncertain height, never set foot on, let alone eaten, a single blade of grass.

And so he teetered on the brink of his new life, paralyzed with fear.

Watching the colt from outside my round pen, I’m gripping the rails hard, holding my breath, for how long I couldn’t say.

His fear, his loss, have seized me tight, have broken my heart.

Maybe this is why I take in only rescued horses, I think.

I can’t bear inflicting such trauma on any of God’s creatures unless it’s the only way to keep them alive.

I have to remind myself that the colt’s version of safety must not eclipse my own.

His loss is real, but he’s actually safer than he’s ever been before.

He just doesn’t know it yet.

It will be my job in the coming months and years to provide him with a new, more expansive sense of safety: one that honors his instincts for self-preservation but that also includes me, my human world, and my (to him) outrageous and nonsensical human demands.

Together we’ll build a refuge of trust, respect, and security between us.

If I get it right, he’ll never feel alone again.

And he’ll never be this scared again for as long as he lives.

***

The sun is lower now, and swallows are dipping and diving for bugs in the slanting rays of light.

The air is full of the sweet, dusty scent green things give off after a long day of heat.

Soon an unholy host of mosquitoes and black flies will alight upon my bare arms.

It’s time, buddy, I think, and the colt seems to think so, too.

He quits his hollering and ducks his head down low, eyeballing the gap between the trailer floor and the waiting turf.

Is it safe??? he wants to know, because safety matters most to a horse, more than freedom from the terrifying trap of the trailer, more than the food waiting for him in the round pen.

The colt’s head comes up a notch and he blows out hard.

He lifts one foot, then lowers it to the grass, and the rest of him comes tumbling out after.

Immediately he launches in a tight jog toward the pen: a furry little skeleton powered forward by sheer fright.

But his steps are strong and even, his eyes are clear, and his lungs, to judge from all the bellowing, are working just fine.

My brave little colt is home, sound and safe.

More than a dozen other horses from Sandy’s rescue operation reached their new homes that same week. The rest of the herd disappeared in the middle of the night—lost, but not forgotten, for months to come. Even with multiple charges of animal cruelty pending in multiple counties, authorities could not compel the hoarder to disclose the remaining horses’ location. With great persistence and dedication, Sandy’s organization eventually found them all and saved every last one of them.