Snowy On Top came along pretty much by accident. 

 

Originally I set out to adopt a Curly Mustang. There were two bay six-year-old Curly geldings being advertised on the BLM’s Internet Adoption website. Along the way, I was seduced by the lovely array of photos of young mustangs which had been born in the holding pens.   It seemed so wrong to me, somehow, that a horse with the heritage of the whole wide open, wild, wild West should have been born, instead, into captivity.

 

So, just for kicks and giggles, I put in a couple of bids one two of those (straight-haired) yearlings.  A few weeks later, I got this call:  “You are high bidder on four mustangs.”

 

“What?” I spluttered. “No, I only wanted one.”

 

“Well, the deal is, you don’t have to take any until you have looked them over, live and in person.  Why don’t you let us put you down for all four, we’ll ship them to the site closest to you, and you can decide how many you want after you actually see them.”

That sounded o.k. to me.  And of course my husband had to come along, as he is my chief mustang-picker-outer.

 

The Curlies were full grown, and fully wildly.  We couldn’t even approach their pen without them trying to climb out over the back of it.  The ranger took one look at silver-haired, crippled, overweight ol’ me and said, “Let’s go take a look at those yearlings, now.”

​

The bigger of the two, a tiger roan, came straightaway up to my husband and breathed in his face, making acquaintance. 

​

“Well, that’s quite a good way to get yourself adopted!,” I told him admiringly.  Then he came over and breathed at me, too.  The smaller of the two, a gray, hung back at his buddy’s flank.  

​

“The gray is better built,” I mused, “but clearly, the buckskin (tiger) roan has the better attitude.  Which should I take?”  

​

“You can’t separate them – they’re buddies!”  my husband interjected.  “We ought to take them both.” 

​

And so we did.