LE ROY — On a treeless eight acres north of here, April Sanders spends several hours a day during summer months taking the wild out of mustang fillies.
She is among horse fanciers who volunteer to take in mustangs and prep them so they’ll have a better chance at adoption.
A description written by April of what she does most mornings tells much of the story:
“No longer wild, No. 5092, an American mustang yearling muzzles my hand as if to say, ‘I trust you.’ She quietly submits to being haltered. To all appearances she is a tame filly that has been handled since birth, only the freeze brand on her neck and paperwork from the Bureau of Land Management identify her as a wild American mustang.”
Thursday afternoon, Mejia, the name April gave the filly, was as gentle as a horse ridden for years. Inquisitively she sniffed a stranger’s hand and lowered her head, a sign, said April, that she was ready to be coddled.
“Don’t look her in the eye,” April cautioned. “That makes a horse nervous. And don’t move too quickly around her until she gets to know you.”
The wild isn’t completely gone from Mejia; may never be.
When April added some clothe streamers to her shelter for shade, it took Mejia a while get accompanied enough to go inside, which she previously had done to escape the blazing sun.
Horse and trainer have formed an obviously strong bond, though. Mejia responded positively whenever April wanted her to move one way or another, back up or submit to a halter.
That’s April’s role in a saga that has been played out for centuries, since the Spanish first brought horses to the Americas in the 1500s, and some became free-rangers and feral. Horses freed by miners and other pioneers swelled the herds.
Now, the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees wild horses in 11 western states, has annual roundups to keep the herds from becoming larger than ranges will support. The horses are offered for adoption.
The work of volunteers such as April makes adoption more popular. They spend untold hours with younger horses with the goal of making them gentle, accepting of halters and leading, willing to pick up all four feet and easily go into a a trailer for transport.
“They’re kind of like kindergarten kids,” April said. “They’re sponges, they quickly absorb what they’re taught.
“You set them up for success by going slowly. First you let them come up and smell your hand — they call that a cowboy handshake — and she kept coming up to us as soon as we brought her home. By the second day I could touch her.”
MOST YEARS mustangs are in the foster programs for three months, but this time April has just two months to prepare Mejia, the fourth yearling she’s worked with, for a long-term home.
