Kelpy (RIP 2021), Roughly Two Months After Being Bitten on Our Central Texas Property by a 5 1/2-foot Western Diamondback Rattlesnake
Post Edited February 16, 2026
In this recently taken photograph (January, 2016) of my Australian Kelpie dog, Kelpy, there is a discernable scar running almost five inches from a point just below the left eye down to just underneath her left lower jawline. This scar of hers, something I can’t help myself from seeing everyday, is a constant reminder of her life and death struggle from a single, full-on rattlesnake envenomation and of the innate toughness of our beloved canines relative to us, mere human beings, as their compassionate caregivers and forever faithful companions. She took the hit delivered by a five-and-a-half-foot Western diamondback on Christmas night, 2016. I recall the event as if it were yesterday. I was in our upstairs loft quietly playing acoustic guitar with Kelpy lying at my feet. It had been a chilly, rain-filled Christmas day here in Central Texas. I’d spent the entire day at home alone with the company of our two dogs. My wife, Genie, had been visiting her relatives at the family farm in Cibolo, roughly an hour’s drive from our place. We have a beautiful house and a couple of outbuildings on some property seven miles west of the small town of Lockhart. Genie had gotten home earlier that evening and we enjoyed a late Christmas dinner. Afterward, she’d gone into our main living area to watch some TV while I retired to our upstairs loft to play guitar. The rain had let up perhaps fifteen minutes before the big event and I remember checking my phone for the temperature outside, which was 58 degrees and the time was 8:30 PM. A moment later I heard Sage, our wonderful Chow-mix, barking outside in the kennel which is connected to the back room of our house by way of dog-door. Sage is an extremely proficient watch dog and has a vocabulary of various growls, woofs, and barks ranging from a mild, low growl to a full-on, high pitched, three alarm bark! She continued on for perhaps five seconds before Kelpy rose from the bed, sailed down the steep wooden staircase…just about leaving sparks in her wake. At a full run I could hear her fly through the dog door as if it had all been done in one grand motion. It wasn’t five seconds later that I heard a shrill and troubled yelp and Kelpy reappeared in the house, frantic. She’s a rough and tumble alpha female if there ever was one, chock full of outdoor life experience at her then age of ten years. I’d never heard her in her life yelp in pain, nary even a slight whimper. I looked her over closely as two streams of blood had begun to pool just below her left eye. Like tears of blood, the crimson colored fluid began to trickle down the left side of her face and, on closer inspection, I could see two tell-tale puncture wounds a good inch and a half apart. Sage was still out in the kennel barking furiously when I ran out into the night after quickly flipping on the back porch light. Standing her ground just eight feet to my right, Sage was trying hard to point out the threat. But it was dark and the porch light left a surreal presence in the muffled fog as I looked and I listened for what was by now just a faint rattling in the leaves. It was cold and I’m certain the snake was by now tired and feeling every bit of the chill. Naturally, I was being cautious as all get-out but there had been no time to don my snake boots so I was tip-toeing around in an old pair of Merrell clogs and shorts. Aha! I spotted the snake, a big one for this locale and opened-up on it with my 9mm Ruger. After shooting the snake full of holes and removing its head with a five-foot garden hoe we keep on hand for precisely such duty, I finally had the chance to check Sage over. I turned again to make absolutely certain the snake wasn’t going anywhere without its head as I brought Sage inside to both better inspect her in the light and settle her. She was frothing at the mouth, lathered from the effects of adrenaline and salivary glands gone postal, but I found nothing…not even a scratch. In all that excitement she’d managed to keep both her head and her distance. It dawned on me that by the time Kelpy showed up the snake would have been completely riled. I feared that this was far more dire than a partial envenomation or dry bite warning snakes sometimes give.
By now, we, all the four of us, were inside with the headless snake left outside to be cleaned up later. Genie was on the phone with our vet who lives several towns distant and turned out to be unavailable. It was Christmas night, after all. After listening to his voicemail message we decided to call our secondary vet, a larger operation just eight miles away and in town. Amazingly, a live person picked up the phone and said they had one particular vet who’d been placed on on-call status for the holiday weekend. The answering service gave us the name and cell number of the vet and Genie immediately dialed her up. We were in luck and, while knowingly interrupting her own Christmas dinner, we were consumed by feelings of good fortune. A vet on Christmas night! Someone was smiling down upon us from on high. The vet, new to the clinic but a Baylor Veterinary School grad, met us thirty minutes later at the main clinic in Lockhart. Keeping Kelpy calm and as motionless as possible was easy…she knew full well where we were going and that papa was now in charge. Having spent ten years with this wonderful dog, she and I had crafted a way to communicate through body language, gentle and firm commands and, from early on, the uncanny ability to know what the other was thinking and going to do before doing it. Genie drove while I sat in the back seat of our SUV smoothing-over Kelpy’s coat and using gentle words in a soothing tone. Keeping her calm would help save her life.
We arrived just a few moments after our dedicated vet, each of us knowing it was going to be a long night. Amazingly, (because of the cold weather) there were two other dogs being treated for snake bite who’d arrived just an hour before we rolled-in. I carried Kelpy to the emergency room area of the clinic and walked along with the vet providing her with every relevant detail. From the moment of envenomation, just forty-five minutes had elapsed. We were darned lucky and we knew it. After I got Kelpy settled the vet and an assistant took over while I watched them go to work. While new to this clinic, our vet was moving deftly as if she and her assistant had been partnered-up for years. Once transfer of care had taken place I was told to corral my wife and head home for the night. The clinic doesn’t carry insurance for people in the emergency room on-site, only their beloved pets. I understood the rule but it would be the most difficult goodbye of my lifetime. They were doing all they could and viscerally I knew my dog was in good hands, but mentally I just didn’t want to leave knowing my dog might not make it through the night. Then logic began to take hold. It was now hovering around 11 PM and Genie and I, and Sage, could do no more for our sweet Kelpy. She was in the hands of professionals and what little time I did spend at the clinic that night, that fact had become abundantly clear.
Sleep came slowly but we were, the three of us, exhausted and I eventually drifted off. The vet had indicated that she’d be there all night by Kelpy’s side, administering antivenin, IV saline, and horse plasma. Over the millennia, horses have developed a tolerance for rattlesnake venom, so plasma taken from the blood of a donor horse has within it certain antibodies to quell the damage the venom would otherwise do. This is Texas and this clinic had been weened on snakebites.
The next morning came quickly and I drove up and ran into the clinic at precisely 6:30 AM. I sat and waited for what seemed a lifetime but in reality was less than twenty minutes at which time I was called back into the ER to see my dog. I was astonished at the size of her head and the open, gaping, and draining wound around her neck a full seven inches from the bite zone. The vet said that she’d taken a really potent bite but that the worst was over. Kelpy had made it through the hellish night. We talked and I conceded to leave Kelpy there for two more days and nights of round the clock care. The vet believed if we did so, if we gave her the best of care for a couple of days she’d pull through. The vet then allowed me to walk Kelpy outside in the neighboring grassy area to “go to the bathroom”. My poor dog. My heart sunk as I watched her once bright but now lackluster eyes meet mine. I could only hope. Hope was all I had. I took pictures of the gruesome sight which, to this day only a few others have seen, but I’ve never had the heart to show to my wife. Brutally grotesque. Though different, her bond with Kelpy is as strong as my own and they can be inseparable at times.
On day four I awoke early…somewhere close to 4:30 in the morning. I was anxious to see my dog for today was the day the vet had anticipated her release and I’d be taking her home. Again, I arrived at 6:30 AM and by 8 AM Kelpy had been discharged into my care once more. This tough, wonderful, creation of a dog had pulled through. I never doubted her…not for a minute. I put her on her favorite blanket in the passenger seat of my truck and we headed home for a joyous reunion. I’d cleaned up the snake’s remains before I’d gone to get Kelpy and tossed them in a cow pasture to be eaten by vultures just up the road a half mile from our home (the mess was gone by the following day). I pulled into the driveway, letting Genie and Sage out at the gate and Kelpy and I drove in. I helped Kelpy out of the truck and within seconds she ran through the house and out the dog door headed straight to where the nastiness had gone down. She sniffed around at the remaining blood spots and with Sage yielding her alpha sister a wide berth, Kelpy turned and as if nothing had happened and casually marked the spot. You’d have to know our beloved alpha female, Kelpy, to understand the significance of that mark. It meant that whatever happened during those four days after Christmas of 2016, not once did she forget who she was! And aside from the yelp when taking the bite, I never heard her whimper. She is thirteen now and is as tough, dominant, and willful as ever.
Kelpy – About a Year Prior to Tangling With Her Rattlesnake on Christmas Night, 2016
Edit: After living her sixteen adventure-filled years, we were forced to have Kelpy put down. She’d been treated for some form of liver cancer over the previous couple of years and had taken well to the medication. She remained happy and healthy until we could finally see that she was in pain and made the decision to have her euthanized, right here in our home. Her ashes sit alongside those of Sage, who passed at fifteen years of age, just a year later. The two dogs had grown up together in Colorado and had forged a powerful bond that goes beyond words. We enjoyed hundreds of trail runs and many other adventures together.
My favorite part of a guitar isn’t the beautiful woodgrain, ornate wood figuring, the shape and size of the instrument, or the nice appointments like a maple binding, or the style and colors of the back seam, it’s the pickuard the builder chose to use to augment the overall beauty and particular look of the guitar. Vintage style nickel “Waverly-style tuning machines are something else that immediately catches my eye.
Some years ago, when there was a shift toward more pickgaurd styles and a much broader range of designs and colors, I began to be curiously fascinated by them, particularly tortoiseshell guards. I spent some time researching the history and materials used over the last century.
The first tortoiseshell pickguards didn’t come from a tortoise, at all, but from the now endangered hawksbill sea turtle. What a beautiful animal. The practice of using this obviously gorgeous creature to make all manner of ornate things such as ladies hair combs, belt buckles, mirrors and hairbrushes, was first used over a hundred years ago. Pickguards from this era are so rare that I couldn’t find one online. These pickgaurds would be still attached but in very poor condition on guitars more than a hundred years old, and not many guitars from that period have survived. Other extremely old pickguards would have become detached from their guitars and would have been unceremoniously thrown away. I did load one photo of a modern pickgaurd for you to compare.
Hunted for centuries, a CITES moratorium was placed in the early 1970’s on hunting, sale, or trade of this creature and it’s beautiful shell. Suddenly, the use of “tortoiseshell” became illegal, but I recollect seeing guitars from the late 70’s still adorned with turtle shell pickguards. I suppose, in practice. it took a few years for the moratorium to settle in on remaining stocks.
Since then, several materials have been or are still in used today, such as various forms of plastic including nylon and PVC. It wasn’t until the advent of “genuine Italian celluloid” after WWII that a material as beautiful as tortoiseshell began to make inroads and, within a decade, became the preferred pickguard material for the entire industry. Suddenly, all sorts of color combinations became available and every major guitar brand used nothing but high-quality celluloid acetate. You can see some of those different options in the photo showing celluloid sheets, from which pickguards are manufactured or made one at a time, by hand. Today, the number of boutique pickquard makers is growing and for prices ranging from $35 to over $100, a fair amount of money can be spent on buying a custom, handmade pickguard. These custom made pickguards can be absolutely beautiful and when the right one is chosen for a given guitar, it can give that guitar an entirely new look. The process for removing an old pickguard and installing a new one is not difficult but does require some focus and attention so as to not cause damage to the guitar’s finish. As always, you can reduce any angst you might have by taking the job to a qualified luthier.
As they say, “all good things come to an end” and, today, there’s a shortage of high-quality celluloid stock. For a brief period thirty-plus years ago, celluloid acetone was being made in the US, but environmental regulations made it impossible to compete with Chinese manufactured celluloid, which is where the bulk of the world’s supply comes from today.
With this shortage, inventors have been hard at it making hybrid celluloid -epoxy resin pickgaurds. All resin pickguards are also being made.This may be the way the industry is headed, but to my knowledge no single manufacturing company is making them on a production scale. These pickgards can be beautiful to look at but have a rubbery, flexible feel and are about twice as thick as celluloid sheets. Some people love them and some haven’t gotten used to the idea. Prices range from $35 to around $70. Some of these makers have more experience working with this resin based material, so it may be worth spending a little more on a more established maker. Personally, I prefer celluloid but I do not know if the current shortage is long or short-term.
Here are some celluloid pickgard examples from my own guitars:
Examples of Various Celluloid Acetate Pickguards
I have switched-out the stock pickguards with some custom made pickgusrds on several of these guitars. I was completely happy with the stock pickaurds on others.
A Couple of Examples of Resin Pickguards, Resin and Genuine Turtle Shell Picks
According to the site Enviroliteracy, the following screenshot shows number of the African Wild Dogs (AWD’s) remaining, as of March of this year, to be around 7,000 individuals with just 1,500 listed as adults.
The key to understanding the relationship between being formally listed as endangered (the AWD made the ICNU “Red List” list twenty-five years ago) and attempting to predict how long a given species has left in based solely upon scientific research, the most important of which has to do with the minimum number of breeding pairs required to maintain a healthy gene pool (for that given species). Obviously, no one can be certain but studies have indicated that the number hovers around 300.
Science has already spent decades researching endangered species of all kinds, with more research going into some than others. “Higher-order” mammals, whether sea or land-based, seem to get the most attention. It makes sense that we would be the most concerned about the creatures with which we have the most in common. Social behavior, language, habitat, overall intelligence, and other characteristics. This research has led to a much greater understanding of the creatures we most respect and admire. Because they are generally at the top of the food chain and would be the most harmful to the ecosystems surrounding them were they to disappear, endangered predators and species that are strong bio-indicators garner the most attention. Though not as heavily studied as certain bears, tigers, lions, wolves, whales, and some porpoises, the African Wild Dog certainly warrants ample consideration. The ecosystems in which they are found and the other creatures within them would topple, creating a domino effect and many other species would be brought to the brink of extinction, or worse, simply disappear not long after the demise of the AWD.
There is more pressure than ever on those of us who truly care to redouble our efforts such that more people around the world join the fight to protect existing AWD habitat and push for the creation of additional habitat by funding conservancy programs to procure lands which are adjacent to the patchwork of existing protected areas and national and state run wildlife preserves. The concept is already at work in other parts of the world through organizations such as the Nature Conservancy. The point is is that there are real world mechanisms in place to acquire additional lands on behalf of endangered species. I don’t see why, with appropriate funding, the same concept can’t be put use in parts of Africa where the AWD still has a toehold. Perhaps it’s already happening and I’m just unaware of such doings.
I wake up each morning with an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach with grave concerns for this planet and its inhabitants knowing in my heart that it may already be too late for turning things around. There really isn’t much time remaining for the world’s most endangered species, twenty, perhaps thirty years. But then I have a talk with myself over a cup of coffee and realize once again that we’ve got an immense obligation to threatened species everywhere and that no matter how bleak things may look, we must have the resolve to fight our best fight and if it should come to it, go down swinging.
Given that the subject has to do with something as important to world history as religion, some fact-checking should probably have taken place.
The history of mankind making war on itself goes back to the dawn of primordial man.. But since the question limits the discussion to the beginning of Christianity, a concept that’s only been in existence for a little over 2,000 years, we’ll focus on that period of time alone. In the history of war the concepts from the title of this post (“Turn to other cheek”, “fight fair”) are hardly the centuries old words of Christians alone. They are among the underpinnings of many peaceful societies and religious tenets that can be found in many other forms of religious scripture, including that of Buddhists, Muslims, and, Islamists who worship peace at their core. Unfortunately, it is the “extremists” and their warring predilections that people judge entire religions on, solely on the deluded actions of a relative few. Scandinavian based societies tend to value peace and the freedom to practice that peace and tranquility over anything .
The Roman Catholic Church has been called the bloodiest of all institutions where, in the name of god, its soldiers have been every bit as brutal as any of its enemies over the history. The rapid growth of Christianity came as a result of violent periods such as the Crusades followed a couple hundred years later by Colonialism. Christian armies for various European countries were feared greatly by the indigenous people who may have peacefully occupied these little corners of the world for centuries. These are examples of things we are rarely taught accurately as children being educated in the country of ours. Other periods in history where Christian armies roamed far and wide, conquering lands and people along the way, the Spanish occupation of Central America, and the 200 years it took European Americans to subjugate Native American people, one tribe at a time.
I don’t have time to dive into this question farther, so I’ll end by saying that, during times of war, the rules of engagement invariably change the longer and more deadly the given conflict. This leads to more and more aggressive tactics by the warring parties involved . As is the case today, there are often more than two sides fighting a given war at a given time. We have lost two major conflicts in the last seventy years in part because we weren’t aggressive enough and allowed politicians, not career military men, to decide the protocols of modern warfare. The North Vietnamese could handle the brutality and length of that war while the US never truly committed. The same could be said of Afghanistan and every engagement we’ve had in the Middle East over the last forty+ years. The lesson of going halfheartedly into another country thousands of miles distant, into lands indigenous peoples have been warring over for centuries, and expecting to win and restructure those countries to our liking is ludicrous. Go in with the full weight of our technology and soldiers and we have the capability to win, every time. This is the way war works and, unfortunately, if your goal is to win, it’s time to commit fully and remain fully committed until the job is done, all-the-while being every bit as brutal as your enemies.
This is one of my most prized photographs. I wish I had a higher-resolution picture, but, for me, back in 2009, it was either my Blackberry or my faithful 3.2 meg Canon Digital Elf that I kept at all times in the glovebox of my truck. I carried that tiny camera with me since Canon came out with it in the late 90’s. It was great for just about everything, including shooting video, except in the event that years later I’d want to have some of my many great shots blown-up into something of “wall hanging” size. Still, I am lucky to have this pic at all as the subjects were virtually impossible to capture without the aid of a good telephoto lens.
I was living and working in Cortez, Colorado, running a new operations office for one of the larger natural gas exploration and production companies in the US. This one was headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma with operations throughout the Western US, including Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. My job had me both driving long distances between assets and going back and forth between offices in Bloomfield, New Mexico, Durango, and Cortez in Southwest Colorado. Between where my work has taken me and my outdoor interests and activities, I have had the luxury of seeing wolves, mountain lions, bobcats, lynxes, wolverines, black bears, grizzlies, foxes, coyotes, eagles, ospreys, and virtually every prey species associated with that food chain.
Natural Gas Processing Plant, North-Central Colorado(Courtesy The Williams Compnies)Living off–the-grid, near Hesperus, Colorado Gas Plant near Bloomfield, NM (Courtesy The Williams Companies)
My piece of the above project in North Central Colorado was relatively small in relation to the total cost and seven-year build cycle, but it was an important role and pleased me greatly to be a part of such a team of engineers and project managers. Including construction hands, hundreds of people had a hand in the work. I was responsible for designing and building the station inlet and outlet piping and equipment for this plant, which, when completed, became the largest gas processing facility of its kind. The area was called the Piceance Basin, and its location provided me with incredible opportunities to go on long runs with my dog and view untold numbers of elk and deer, and make the drive to flyfish the Flaming Gorge of the Green River, in Utah. Traveling to and from the site from my office in Cortez gave me even more wildlife viewing opportunities, including herds of wild horses in the distance. Unlike the rough, high desert ecosystems of so many other places that contained these animals, I can remember thinking that these wild horses (in the Piceance Basin of Central Colorado) had it made. Plenty of grass, water, and suitable terrain. I don’t think these horses had cause for much travel and probably lived their lives within thirty miles of their birthplace. But the point I wanted to make here is that oil and gas basins hold plenty of wild horses, thousands, and the horses have remained in this county even during the construction of larger projects and they continue to inhabit these pockets of extractive industry like mining and oil and gas production. Employees generally leave these horses alone, so their fear of mankind appeared to be non-existent. As long as they are left to be wild horses and do as wild horses do, they have no reason to move from a perfectly good area. There were large pockets of private range held by the nearby ranching community, so these horses had abundant access to those lands, and the area got plenty of snow and rain each year to keep the tall grasses in excellent condition. Unlike other parts of Colorado and certainly rangeland in Nevada and Utah where there is too much competition from both wild and domesticated animals, such as sheep and cattle, where the rangeland and all the creatures it supports are in serious need of management.
Over the span of thirty years in Colorado, I have had many otherwise rare opportunities to view thousands of animals in their natural environs. Wild horses were among the rarest. The picture was taken in an area I had come to know well. It is on a slice of BLM land which adjoins the Southern Ute Native American Reservation to the south and the protection of Mesa Verde National Park to the east. The entry to this particular area was accessed via BLM road that was often open to the public. I would hike with my girlfriend and dogs, go for extended runs and ride both my mountain and motocross bikes all over the related trails. Seldom did I encounter another human being and it had become an area I felt quite strongly about. If I did run into anyone, it would be a hunter, or two, in the area to hunt coyotes. I was a hunter myself, purely elk, and almost exclusivley good-sized bulls during the month long archery season, and, while I am vehemently opposed to hunting coyotes for sport, their populations do need to be maintained and, in Colorado, a bounty could be applied to a corpse as long as the hunter held to the strict number of animals they could take with the proper licensing. Contrary to public opinion, these guys don’t tend to be monsters but are out enjoying nature in a fairly pure form, not leaving messes of campsite garbage in the field or, the thing that bugs me most, making all sorts of noise or breaking out a boombox and knocking back a few beers, and “plinking” (walking around with a smaller caliber gun and shooting at old cans and bottles scattered about these kinds of areas) which really weren’t far outside the city limits). Depending upon where you are, the combination of drinking and shooting is 4illegal and I’ve put an end to these nefarious activities myself on many occasions.
This particular location had become somewhat sacred to me because BLM could decide on any given day to close the main access gate out by the highway, so I didn’t want some group of lawbreakers ruining the access for everyone else. It was just a ten minute drive for me to get there and park, and take off on a long run with my dogs. You could say that I was vested in the place and didn’t want to lose such a recreational opportunity so close to home, particularly since I effectively had my own splinter-herd of wild horses to enjoy. Since I mostly ran with my dogs, I had them trained to leave the wild horses alone, but that was only when I made sure to keep us well away from them, at least by a quarter-mile, or so. While with the dogs, I maintained a rule for the three of us that we never got close enough to bother them in any way.
But there were days when I purposefully went alone to stalk this small herd to get in close enough to observe them for a couple and hours and, with any luck, snap a few good photos. As part of the greater Mesa Verde herd, they numbered between ten and fifteen individuals with the usual hierarchy, a single stallion and possibly a smaller stallion as tolerated by the big stallion, six or eight mares and several offspring. Depending on the time of year, this would include a couple of this year’s foals and several yearlings from the previous year. This is what the herd would be comprised of at its healthiest. Some days I’d have to run several miles, including some doubling back, before I’d spot them amongst the thick pinon, juniper, and sage. Rarely were they out in the open sage as they are shown in the photograph, but it had snowed several inches of heavy, wet snow overnight and the change to morning temperature had come up just enough to cultivate a thick fog which gave them a sense of security. Plus, they were cold from the hard night and needed to be up and about grazing and trying to get warm, catching whatever few rays of sun making their way through the low-slung clouds. There was no wind, so it was an absolutely perfect opportunity to close most of the distance by walking through a draw filled with pinon trees and rocks. I knew this draw, and by the time it ended, I would be within seventy five yards of them. I remained in the cover of the top of the draw and watched them mill about, pawing the ground to get at the grass beneath. I probably observed them for an hour before the urge to carefully approach and try to get a series of pics took over.
This would be the closest I’d gotten to them. I crested the head of the draw and, standing behind a couple of small pinon trees, I slowly stepped out into the open and stopped, just standing there looking disinterested and away. Two things could happen. They could quickly collect themselves and bolt or, because I wasn’t acting like a predator trying to sneak up closer and I was in the open, in full view, coupled with the idea that these horses had gotten to know me at a greater distance, they might just hold their ground and let me approach by another ten or fifteen yards. I did not want to blow this opportunity, so I decided I’d go roughly ten more yards and take some photos. It was frustrating not having a camera with a powerful zoom where I would have remained in the sanctity of the head of the draw and gotten my pictures from there. But getting this close had worked in my favor because I got to watch them form a defensive circle, with the powerful gray stallion pointing himself toward me and the mares closing-up around the young. The lieutenant took a spot toward the back of the circle. I was now standing about fifty yards away and had begun taking pictures. I was pretty certain that they wouldn’t oblige me for long, so, after ten minutes, the lead mare gave the sign and began to walk off with the others falling in behind, and the stallion remaining in back, always between me and his harem. I marveled at his size, looking very much like a weight-lifter on steroids. His head, neck, shoulders and hind quarters were massive and obvious even under his thick winter coat. I watched until they all but disappeared into the mist and walked the two miles back to my truck. I’d been fortunate to locate them so close to the BLM road that morning. They could have just as easily been five or six miles into the sage to the south.
I’d had a triumphant morning but, because of the dim lighting conditions and snowy, monochromatic background, this one pic was the best I could get. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my girlfriend of the encounter. It was an extremely rare glimpse into the lives of wild horses.
Credit iheartwildhorses.comCredit Rod DoughertyCredit blogspot.comCredit Terry SpiveyCredit Sandy SharkeyBLM helicopter (Credit American Wild Horse Campaign)Typcal holding pen (Credit American Wild Horse Campaign)
The plight of the Amican Wild Horse goes back for centuries. Among scholars, it is generally thought that the American Wild Horse is a descendent of those horses which came over during the discovery of the New World by the Spanish in the fourteenth century not long before the Aztec and Mayan peoples of Central America and Mexico vanished, many due to European disease brought to the shores of North America by the Conquistadors and other conquering factions, there were thousands of horses left behind, never to be shipped back to where they came. I could certainly be wrong about this as it flies in the face of what has been historically taught by people far more educated on the subject than me, but I believe that rather than a few horses wandering off and becoming feral, I contend that it was hundreds, if not thousands purposefully left behind rather than taking up valuable cargo space on the returning vessels headed back to their native European empires. It didn’t make economic or pratical sense to round them all up and return them by ship to their native lands while most of the explorers would be returning by the skin of their teeth with all sorts of plunder. It takes a lot of effort to hunt-down and annihilate or enslave tens of thousands of lesser armed natives. There would be additional militant explorers traveling further and further north over the following centuries and, by then, native American cultures in Northern Mexico and the what would later become the Great American Southwest had discovered these beautiful creatures of European descent roaming about by the thousands. Over the next several hundred years, many of these horses would be domesticated and become the single greatest factor in the advancement of the American Indian Horse Culture, which now spanned any number of tribes from the Great Plains in the heart of America to the great Pacific Ocean of what would eventually become California, Oregon, and Washington. The wild horses continued to evolve into mixed-breeds from various parts of Europe into a slightly smaller and stockier lineage that was predominantly from being once domesticated on the European continent and various other places in the world that had specialized in breeding their horses for a number of different purposes, to going back into the melting pot to take on new traits, as dictated by the new environments they found themselves in. Over the course of the next three-hundred years, more horses were brought to the Eastern shores of the New World, some of which would invariably spill into the American West both during and after the Indian Wars when various strains of horses from around the world were unleashed onto the Western landscape. There were also horses left behind from the American Civil War. As these horses were captured and reintroduced to domestication, the American West became a giant crucible of domestication and breeding.
All sorts of factors would define what would become the American mustang and what their regional popultions might be at a given time. As natural predators were eradicated throughout the Western United States and the cycle of naturally occurring fire had changed drastically due to larger and larger areas of white settlement, the ecology behind the history of the American Wild Horse became tremendously complicated and mired in debate. I will not attempt to cover it here. Suffice it to say that Wild Horse management is complex and seldom will you find three experts in ten who agree on the kinds of policies that need to float to the top and become legislation. Combine that with the fact that environmental conditions for these animals change considerably from region to region and state to state. Each herd has its own set of special circumstances that combine to help that herd thrive or see it struggle, on the edge of oblivion.
The thing that I find most disconcerting is the language used on the many sides to the equation is different when it comes to defining what species of flora and fauna are truly native to this part of the world. This is because species that are determined to be native get first billing when it comes to the level of managed protection they are given. The debaters tend to throw wild horses (and centuries old populations of wild burro) in with cattle and sheep, though one could argue that wild horses have been here far (hundreds of years) longer. If the legislators at the top of the food chain were to view this one difference as point of fact and were to capitulate, it would change everything downstream of that single perception. But even this gets complicated because of good, old fashioned American capitalism. Ranchers of both cattle and sheep are paying custumers when if comes to range management policies. Though each rancher pays an inordinately small contribution to operate their leases on BLM and Forest Service lands, as a whole, it amounts to a tastey sum of funds for the goverenment. There are no users of public lands that pay the way for their precious Wild Horses and these animals, all ungulates, compete for the same grass and water, which, in the drought-stricken west, is at an all time premium. Still, look at the term “Wild Horses” and you’ll see the word “Wild” as the chosen descriptor. We all know that these animals represent the truest form of wildness, as we look upon them with nothing short of awe. I think we’d all agree that there is nothing more breathtaking in this world than fixing our gaze on a herd of wild horses out doing their thing, “being wild”. Why would we dare think that these animals don’t deserve every protection afforded other wild and native creatures?
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Some facts as put forth by Wild Horse Advocate Laura Moretti:
“Fifty million years ago, a small dog-like creature called Eohippus evolved on the North American continent. In fact, this forerunner to the modern horse was traced to the Tennessee Valley. After evolving into Equus and disappearing into Asia and Africa presumably 11 to 13 thousand years ago, the horse returned to our soil with the Spanish in the early 1500s. From their hands, a few escaped onto the American canvas and reverted to a wild state.”
“According to Western writer J. Frank Dobie, their numbers in the 19th century reached more than 2 million. But by the time the wild horse received federal protection in 1971, it was officially estimated that only about 17,000 of them roamed America’s plains. More than 1 million had been conscripted for World War I combat; the rest had been hunted for their flesh, for the chicken feed and dog food companies, and for the sport of it. They were chased by helicopters and sprayed with buckshot; they were run down with motorized vehicles and, deathly exhausted, weighted with tires so they could be easily picked up by rendering trucks. They were run off cliffs, gunned down at full gallop, shot in corralled bloodbaths, and buried in mass graves.”
“Like the bison, the wild horse had been driven to the edge. Enter Velma Johnston, a.k.a. “Wild Horse Annie.” After seeing blood coming from a livestock truck, she followed it to a rendering plant and discovered how America’s wild horses were being pipelined out of the West. Her crusade led to the passage of a 1959 law that banned the use of motorized vehicles and aircraft to capture wild horses. In the end, it was public outcry that ended the open-faced carnage — and it came from the nation’s schoolchildren and their mothers: in 1971, more letters poured into Congress over the plight of wild horses than any other non-war issue in U.S. history; there wasn’t a single dissenting vote, and one congressman alone reported receiving 14,000 letters. President Nixon signed the bill into law on December 15, 1971. And so the Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Actwas passed, declaring that “wild horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene.” The Act was later amended by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978.”
Credit: Laura Moretti in “The History of America’s Wild Horses”, American Wild Horse Conservation
2024: The BLM’s 2024 estimates show a marked difference of 73,520 federally-protected wild horses and burros on BLM-managed public lands as of March 1, 2024. I have no idea as to such a major discrepancy from 2023 to 2024, but using the higher number as a reference, almost 74,000 is nearly three times what scientists estimate public lands can sustainably support.
I say, “says who?!”
A quick Copilot AI search reveals these population estimates from the turn of the nineteenth century to most recent estimates. You’ll note that wild horse numbers over the last two hundred years are very similar to estimates of North American Bison over the same period, though I have seen estimates during the highpoint of bison populations as high as sixty million. I have also read 6 million. Who the heck knows except to say that, at their peak, various species of American Bison were found throughout North America and not limited to the American West and they were mighty and many.
Wherever you choose to get your numbers, what is important is that the populations of American Wild Horses have fluctuated wildly over the centuries.
More recent numbers reflect the ongoing policy, efforts (and failures) to manage and protect the wild horse populations in the United States. One thing that stands out since 1971’s Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro act is the misuse of the term “federal protection”, which is front and center in the language of this act, but has yet to be seen while these horses have been administered by BLM and other agencies acting under the auspices of the federal government.
Because herd numbers naturally vary considerably on their own and land use policy is an ever-changing storm, and, because the wild horse is generally out of the public eye unless it is in severe difficulty (when their numbers drop so low that herd gene pools are no longer viable to create healthy individuals) or someone catches a BLM helicopter which is alamingly close to the horses being rounded up for separation to public sale, or shipment for euthanization, and that one video gets loaded to YouTube and goes viral, the public finally gets to see what’s going on public (BLM administered) range-lands throughout the Western US, every year. The media only covers their plight when numbers become dangerously low or when verifiable reports of mistreatment get leaked to the public. Each time this happens, perhaps once every six to ten years, there is a huge public outcry to save these animals. Things go so far as to get heated between members the government and wild horse advocacies or people who simply care enough about what’s happening to take action and take a militant stance. Personally, I’m currently of that mindset myself and believe, as with many controversial issues, there comes a time when it becomes a final solution. The only solution. The debate has been raging since long before I was born (in 1961) and, while important legislation has been passed which should have been the template for protection of these precious animals, the government allows its agencies free reign in acting in any manner they choose. The time has come for anyone and everyone who feels a deep affinity for these key players in the history of the American West, the beautiful and historically necessary creatures that evolved alongside mankind, to choose a side: that of the American Wild Horse or their nemesis, the United States government. I want nothing more before I pass than to see this issue resolved once and for all, leaving the grandest symbol of the American West to run free for generations to come. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care how it happens, as long as it happens. Time always tells and I have a deep-seated feeling that if we simply leave things to time, there will one day soon be no more Wild Horses to debate over. They will be forever lost to time.
Please do something. Give to a wild horse advocacy group, educate yourself on the subject. Go to YouTube and see what happens during these BLM Wild Horse roundups. I guarantee that once you come to know what’s actually happening out there on “Public Lands”, you won’t be able to help yourself from getting involved. Many people travel to these Wild Horse roundups (the times and places are a matter of public record) to prevent mistreatment that would otherwise happen, well away from watchful eyes. The more eyes we put on them along with obtaining the names and positions of those responsible, the more we can provide much needed pushback on agencies such as the BLM and the local infrastructure that is in place for them to hide behind. Many people have a hand in the destruction and are compensated for their part in the doing.
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