Mustang Matchmaking

“Matchmaker Matchmaker,
Make me a match
Find me a find,
Catch me a catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Look through your books
and make me a perfect match…”

The Search

During those heady days leading up to this past August’s BLM Wild Horse & Burro Internet Auction, where I eventually found Songwe, I must have looked at each and every one of the 75 or so horses pictured on the site about 10,000 times. Meanwhile, my friend Chelsea (of the AppalachianCenter for Wild Horses), was doing the same thing. We were both deeply ill with mustang madness. Our mutual goal? Find me the perfect mustang match.

We later joked that the BLM auction site should really be called MustangMatch.com due to its similarities to online dating sites. You are drawn to the handsome headshots, and then you click on each picture to read a profile and see more photos. You stare for hours into the eyes of each prospect, wondering if you might find a spiritual connection with that one. The only difference with the mustangs is that there is no communication, coffee dates or candlelight dinners before you get involved. You have to pick a horse based on the slim data on the available on the BLM website and what you feel in your own gut.

Hell, it’s an insane process when you think about it; choosing a wild horse to gentle and train, basically sight unseen, except for a few photos. During the process, I questioned how I had allowed Chelsea to talk me into this. I would wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat. Fortunately, when I was about 12 years old, I was in 4-H and I entered the New York State Pictorial Horse Judging Contest. I had to judge the conformation of 10 horses based solely on four photo views: front, back, and each side. It took me less than an hour to complete my analysis. I earned the highest score in the state of NY… 98 out of 100. So I at least had some “skills” to draw on during the selection process.

So each day, for about two weeks, Chelsea and I sent links to individual horses over to each other via Facebook messenger in an attempt to narrow the field of prospects. All of them seemed viable. All were breathtakingly beautiful, all needed homes. And each had their good points and bad points. It was tough. But after endless mustang ogling, I kept coming back to Necktag #: 8619, a 2 year old grulla colored gelding. I discovered him one morning over coffee and sent his link to Chelsea to see what she thought of him. She liked him too. He was sort of plain looking, but he had very nice lines, and a soft eye, and he looked more like an "English" type horse than many of the others. Most of my training as a rider has been in dressage and general English balance seat, so his body type attracted me. Though none of the photos showed him doing anything but standing around, I could just imagine riding his smooth and floaty trot and balanced canter.

I quickly dubbed him “Mr. Grulla” and I kept imagining myself standing in front of him in a round pen. The vision was so real and vivid that I knew he was the one for me. To help with my decision, I read about the horses from the heard management area in Wyoming where he came from:

“Wild horses in the Divide Basic HMA have many domestic bloodlines in their background, including American Quarter Horse, Thoroughbred, Standardbred, Arabian, and smaller draft breeds. Nearly every coat color can be found within the herds. The animals tend to be of moderate to large size for wild horses. The combinations of size, conformation, coat colors and patterns, and excellent physical condition have become a draw for potential adopters.” – BLM Adoption Site HMA Info

Sounded pretty good!                                                                              

The Final Day of Bidding

When the final day of bidding arrived, I was a nervous wreck. Chelsea had registered with the BLM and handled the actual bidding process. She had already put a few early bids in on Mr. Grulla to test the waters in the days preceding the final day. The bid amount held pretty steady and mostly unchallenged for several days. But when we got to the final 30 minutes of bidding Mr. Grulla’s price shot up by hundreds of dollars. It was worse than eBay! Apparently someone else had also imagined him or herself standing within Mr. Grulla in a round pen. But I couldn’t let this horse go to anyone else. I felt that he was meant to be mine.

"Matchmaker Matchmaker
Make me a match,
Find me a find,
Catch me a catch
Night after night in the dark I'm alone
So find me a match of my own..."

So we persisted, texting each other back and forth like two madwomen, for ten minutes, and in the end, won the bid. $1025. Phew! A bit more than I wanted to spend on a horse I had never even met. But nevertheless, I was so excited!

A week later I left for Africa to work on a conservation project with lions. Mr. Grulla (who I eventually named Songwe after my favorite male lion cub) was scheduled to arrive in North Carolina the day I returned from Africa. And every day while I was in Africa, seeing the most amazing wildlife spread out across the plains, I daydreamed of Mr. Grulla and what lay ahead for us.

From lions to mustangs. Wow! Life was and is good!

A Horse of a Different Color

"Grulla" (aka "grullo") is a Spanish word pronounced "grew' ya" or "grew' yo." It is a rare and interesting horse color. You only see it in a few domestic horses … typically American Quarter Horses. It has primitive roots and is more common in mustangs, but still uncommon overall.

Songwe has the telltale solid stripe down his spine and dark squiggly stripes on the backs of his legs and on his neck. His head is also darker than his body. If you look closely at his picture, you can see what I am talking about. Pretty cool!

More information on the grulla color:
http://www.grullablue.com/colors/grullocolor.htm
http://glacierridge.com/grulla.htm