Wild About Taming Mustangs

Standing in the dining room of Lifesavers Ranch in the Mojave Desert east of Lancaster, a horseman is explaining what motivates a wild mustang.

"A horse," Jerry Tindell says, "gains its courage by being afraid."

Tindell's audience is made up of about 20 horse owners and prospective owners who have gathered for mustang boot camp on this brilliant autumn day. The purpose of the camp is to help people befriend and tame animals that until recently were among the biggest, fastest and most formidable wild creatures still running loose in America.

Tindell tells how the constant vigilance that enabled the mustangs to survive in the wild makes them standoffish and fearful around people who adopt and try to domesticate them. Often, the horses are not easily ridden -- assuming that their owners are lucky enough to get a saddle on them.

One woman tells Tindell that she often can't get near her horse. A man complains that his mustang only wants to mope about and act like a "lawn ornament." Another woman says her otherwise courageous mustang turns into a terrified ninny around her baby girl.

Tindell listens sympathetically and then takes the class outside to a dusty corral, where an edgy mustang named Wimpy waits. Wimpy was long ago gentled -- today's politically correct term for broken. But Tindell still asks everyone to back several feet away from the corral's iron fence, lest Wimpy defy his name and begin kicking.

In the language of pop culture, Tindell is known as a horse whisperer, but he prefers to be called a horseman. A resident of nearby Hesperia, he was hired by Jill Starr, the director of Lifesavers Ranch, to teach at the boot camp because of his ability to firmly but gently persuade stubborn horses to do exactly what he wants them to do.

Tindell has the air of a man who grew up around horses, which he did. He likes to joke that he didn't begin riding until he was 6 weeks old because his mother was overprotective. Everything he does reeks of confidence. Using subtle pulls on the rope, eye contact and voice commands, he quickly has Wimpy trotting tight circles around him.

"Sadly, most of the people who adopt the mustangs are first-time horse owners," Tindell says later. "But people fall in love with them. The problem is it's like taking a deer home and putting it in your living room and turning on the lights. Man, what a wreck!"