>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
>> The Horse Lover is a memoir
of H. Alan Day's work
to save wild mustangs.
At one time he was the owner
of three ranches in Arizona,
Nebraska, and South Dakota.
It was on his South Dakota ranch
where he managed the first
government sponsored wild
horse sanctuary.
He successfully lobbied
Congress to approve the idea
and in 1989 he received
1500 wild horses
from the Bureau of Land Management.
In addition for being -- for
being a rancher for decades,
he is a New York Times
best-selling author
of an earlier book, Lazy B:
Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch
in the American Southwest
, which he co-authored
with his sister, Sandra
Day O'Connor.
The second -- or co-author of The
Horse Lover is Lynn Wiese Sneyd,
the owner of LWS Literary
Services and a published author.
She received the Arizona Book award
for best health nutrition wellness
book for Healthy Solutions:
A Guide to Simple Healing
and Healthy Wisdom .
Her articles, essays
and poetry have appeared
in various publications
across the country.
Mr. Day and Ms. Sneyd will be
interviewed by Sandra Day O'Connor,
the first woman to serve
on the U.S. Supreme Court.
She was appointed by
President Reagan --
[ Applause ]
She was appointed by
President Reagan in 1981
and was confirmed unanimously
by the United States Senate.
She served for 24 years and
retired from the family --
from the Supreme Court
for family reasons.
I know for many of you that
she serves as a role model.
And a few years ago, when she spoke
at the Smithsonian and I was part
of that full audience, that I was --
I learned that on the
ranch that she grew up,
there was no running
water or indoor plumbing.
That when she graduated
from law school
as a woman she found it
very hard to find a job.
So to get into -- to get
her foot into the door,
she took work as a volunteer
and then was successful
and received many other promotions
with the ultimate being
appointed to the Supreme Court.
There will be time at
the end of the interview
for questions from the audience.
May I present now Sandra
Day O'Connor
who will be interviewing
her brother,
H. Alan Day, and Lynn Wiese Sneyd.
Thank you.
[ Silence ]
[ Applause ]
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
We're very glad to be here
and I thank Jim Billington,
who heads the Library of Congress,
he deserves a lot of credit
for making this event possible.
[ Applause ]
We were -- there were three children
in the Day family when I grew up.
Alan was the boy, and there
were two girls, my sister and I.
And we had an amazing life
in a very remote place.
It was on the Arizona/New
Mexico border.
It was more than 30 miles
to the nearest town.
And there was just nobody there.
It was amazing [laughter].
And you had to provide
everything yourselves.
If you wanted water to drink,
you had to drill a well
or catch rainwater, and
that was a little dirty.
But everything was something
you had to do yourself,
and do it 30 to 35
miles from any town.
And so we had stay well because
there weren't any doctors.
And you had to patch
anything that broke
because there wasn't a
fix-it shop anywhere around.
It was just an amazing life,
but in a way it was exciting
and fascinating and we enjoyed it.
We grew up all right.
We didn't have any big problems
because of the distance
we were from any town.
And we managed to write about it a
little bit in a couple of the books
that we had emerge
from the Lazy B. One
of the books is called the Lazy B .
Now that was the brand.
Why do you call it Lazy B?
It's because the brand, the B,
is lying down, so it's lazy,
that's [laughter] what
makes it the Lazy B. Okay,
it's the brand laying
down on its side.
And we just had an
amazing life there.
And my brother, after he grew up,
I didn't know if he was going to
or not, but he did [laughter],
and we ended up with a place
in South Dakota of all
places, as if Arizona
and New Mexico border
wasn't far enough,
we ended up with this
place in South Dakota.
And it ended up, as Alan is going to
tell you, being a sanctuary for some
of the wild horses in our country.
I don't know how many of
you realize that we live
in a very big country here,
and that there are a number
of so-called wild horses,
that means horses
that don't have any
particular family [inaudible].
They aren't horses that are being
ridden by some rancher someplace
or being trained, they're
just horses that have grown
up on some kind of big ranch land
without any supervision or training,
and we call those the wild horses.
And we had quite a few of them in
the U.S. at the time Alan matured,
and he ended up providing
sanctuary to the federal government
to have a place for some of these
wild horses up in that area,
and he'll tell you a
little bit about that.
And the book that we
have that he wrote
about the wild horse sanctuary is
one that will be of interest to you,
and maybe Lazy B will still be
of interest, that was the brand
for the ranch that we grew up on.
Now, why did we call it Lazy B?
It wasn't because we were lazy, it's
because the B, which was the brand,
a capital B, was laying on its side,
so that made it the Lazy B ranch.
It wasn't because we were so lazy,
it was because the brand
was laying on its side.
Okay, so with that
little background,
I think we'll get started,
and this is my brother, Alan.
And you have to meet Lynn Wiese
Sneyd over here who helped Alan
with his book about the wild horses.
So we'll get started.
And, Alan, what would
you like to start with?
>> H. Alan Day: Well, first I
would like to thank all of you
for being here and for Jim
Billington inviting us.
It's a huge step across the country,
but to this audience, to this place,
I kind of would think like, when
I was growing up we used to go
to the county fair and I'd
take a fat hog or a fat steer
down to the county fair, and then
one time I went to the state fair.
Well, wow, there's a big
difference, let me tell you,
so [laughter] I think I'm here
at the state fair [laughter].
So it's a lot of fun to be here.
And everybody that we met last night
and today has been just marvelous
to welcome us and make us
feel -- feel welcome here.
And so I'm very appreciative
of that.
To start a little bit
about the book,
Sandra -- have to go back away's.
Sandra called me one
day and said, "Alan,
we should write a book together."
Well, my background in
writing a book is zero.
And I said, well, why
should we do that?
And Sandra said, well, a lot of
people wondered about her background
and asked, you know, how
could somebody from a --
such a rural humble background,
with no running water and things
like that, how could you
achieve what you've achieved.
And Sandra's broad
answer to that was that,
the ranch taught us so much.
Taught us self-reliance.
Taught us problem-solving.
Taught us work ethic that has
stood her in good [inaudible]
through the rest of her life.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: And
it's taught us how to read,
because we didn't have --
>> H. Alan Day: Well, that too.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor:
-- television or anything.
>> H. Alan Day: Well
[laughter] I'll get to that.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Okay.
>> H. Alan Day: [Laughter]
And, by the way,
in my talk I'm going
to call her Sandra.
I'm allowed, but not everybody is.
A quick story.
Sandra wanted to buy a car
one time and didn't want to go
through the process, and I said,
well, I'll take care of it.
I had a friend that was a car
dealer, so we made the deal.
And he wanted to deliver the car
because he wanted to meet her.
So the night before he was
going to deliver the car,
he called me in a panic,
and he said, "Oh,
my God, what do I call her?
Do I call her Your Majesty?
Do I call her [laughter] --
you know, what do I call her?"
And I said, well, I call
her Sandra [laughter].
So, I'm allowed.
So, anyway, Sandra asked me to
write the Lazy B book with her
and the main reason was I
stayed on and lived on the ranch
and had all the anecdotes
and stories.
She shared in a lot of them, but she
was also a star at Stanford and on
to all the things that
have happened in her life,
and I stayed on the ranch.
So she needed the color and the
anecdotes from me, which we did.
But doing that was a lot of fun.
The result was, it
was well received.
The book was well received.
And we went and did some book
talks together and all that,
and I thought, wow, this is
magic, and I thought, gee,
if you can write half a book, your
next job is to write a whole book.
Step up a notch here [laughter].
So I had this amazing experience to
write about with the wild horses.
I'll get to that in a minute.
But one thing I wanted to
comment about before we go on is,
writing with her was so easy because
when we started off, I said, well,
okay, I'll try, what
do you want me to do?
She said, "Get a yellow pad
and a number two pencil."
[Laughter] Which was
her encouragement.
But I would write these [inaudible]
and stories and send them to her,
and they would disappear
and reappear
in a much more smooth,
polished fashion.
And I guess I wasn't quite aware the
process, you know, how much there is
to writing and how hard you have
to struggle to word it correctly
and really get your point across.
So when I started writing my own
book and didn't have big sister
to polish the edges, I had a
real wake-up call [laughter]
about how difficult it is to write
something that really makes sense,
and gets your point across.
So I struggled with that
for quite some time.
And I wrote the book and couldn't
get it sold, and I re-wrote it,
and I couldn't get it sold,
and I re-wrote it again
and I couldn't get it sold.
Guess who appeared [laughter].
And Lynn is amazing with words,
and has a real background.
Her life is writing and words,
and so I enlisted her help
to take what I had
done and make a book
that somebody would want to read.
So the end result is
very much a partnership
with Lynn to make it what it is.
But I have a huge appreciation about
how hard it is to the whole process,
when I thought it was so
easy doing it with Sandra.
So, anyway, that was our process.
And so the big picture
on the horses is,
our nation has 179 separate herds
of wild horses scattered all
across the country, mostly
in the 10 western states.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: How many all
together would you say wild horses
are in our country?
>> H. Alan Day: Forty-nine
thousand wild horses.
But one of the big problems
is, they reproduce so fast
that the herds grow in size
really quickly, some herds as fast
as 20% per year, so they quickly
outrun their available forage.
They have to have grass
and nutrition.
So if you have 100 horses in a
given area, then 120 the next year,
and 140 the next year, pretty soon
they don't have enough grass to eat.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Well,
who owns these wild horses?
What [inaudible]?
>> H. Alan Day: The government --
these are government owned horses.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor:
So we all do?
>> H. Alan Day: We all do
[laughter], absolutely.
So the Bureau of Land
Management, Department of Interior,
struggles to maintain enough
grass and keep the herds balanced
to where there's enough
grass for the herds,
and they have to gather
horses off of there
because they reproduce so fast.
Used to be that bears
and mountain lions kind
of kept the population down.
We don't have as many
of those anymore,
and man is the worst
enemy of the wild horses.
We chase them.
We chase them with helicopters,
we force them into corrals,
we separate families, we take
some off, turn some back.
But all of the experiences,
the bad experiences,
the horses have is from man.
We profess to love them,
but we terrorize them.
So that's hard to --
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: But
what is the ultimate end
of life for these horses?
They're publically owned
by the public, and what --
>> H. Alan Day: They
are owned by all of us.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor:
-- happens to them?
>> H. Alan Day: And the
179 herds will remain
out in their respective areas.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor:
On public lands?
>> H. Alan Day: On public lands.
But the excess horses then
get split into two parts.
Some are young and pretty
and they're adoptable,
and so people can adopt those.
You can, I can, they
become adoptable.
But some of them are one-eyed,
crippled, mean, ugly, got a bad leg,
something like that, nobody wants
them, they're unadoptable's.
And that's what we took
up at the sanctuary.
The government didn't
know what to do with them,
and they had them in feed lots.
And I call that horse prison.
Their families have been split
up, they don't have families
that they know, they're
crowded together,
they can't do their family
structure, they get bored,
they can't run out on
the prairie and graze
like maybe nature intended for them.
And so they were just
there in horse prison.
So I got this ranch in
South Dakota, 35,000 acres,
the most beautiful
grassland you can imagine.
And I went to the Bureau of
Land Management and said,
let's take these horses out of
horse prison, out of the feed lots,
and turn them back on this beautiful
prairie, and I'll manage them
and I'll give them the
happiest home they've ever had.
They will have smiles
on their faces.
[Laughter] And so, son
of a gun, they agreed.
Went to Congress -- they said, we
like your idea but you better go
to Congress and get
permission from Congress.
And I was too dumb to know that you
had to hire a lobbyist, so I went
and did it myself [laughter],
and actually talked them
into it, believe it or not.
Surprise! And so here came 1500 wild
horses, and they were truly wild.
When you got near them
they would try to run away,
and they would get a
mile or two miles away
and that was their comfort
level is about a mile.
So I determined to
make friends with them,
to teach them that I wasn't their
enemy, and to have them trust me,
and have them not fear me, but, in
fact, welcome me into their society.
So I started a program of what
is now called horse [inaudible]
training, but it was a
program for me to talk to them,
get to know them, get
them to know me,
and it was amazing how it worked.
Horses really want to be friends.
They're like dogs, they like
people, and they want to be friends
if you give them a chance
and try to understand them.
So we did this program, and one
of the goals of the program was
to teach them to follow me.
If I rode through a pasture
where they were, I wanted to take
to a fresh pasture, new grass.
You know, I'd let them graze for a
week in one pasture and move them
to the next, and move them to the
next, and I didn't want to have
to chase them all over South Dakota
to get them to move, you know,
in their wild state, so I
wanted them to accept me.
And it was amazing how it worked.
I got them to where I could ride
through horseback and wave at them
and say, "Hi guys," and
they'd look up and say, oh,
it's you, what do you want?
And I'd say, "Come on, let's
go to the next pasture."
1500 would get right behind me
and we'd get a nice easy little
gallop across the prairie.
What an amazing visual that is,
rider in front, easy gallop,
beautiful rolling grass country,
and 1500 horses thundering
right behind you
and nickering and happy to be there.
And I'd go through the gate into the
next pasture and they'd spread out,
put their head down, and
start grazing fresh grass
and give me a smile.
Wow, is that not a cool picture?
So I -- you know, why wouldn't you
write a book about that [laughter].
So I did, and -- but then back
to the book and the failures,
and so I want Lynn to talk a
little bit out the writing now.
>> Lynn Wiese Sneyd: Well,
Alan brought me his manuscript,
it was maybe 2006 and 2007 and
we had met when he had a signing
in Tucson for the Lazy B and
we struck up a friendship.
So he brought me this manuscript,
and right away I could see
there was a story there.
I mean, he just told you.
He got 1500 wild horses, he
trained them, he lived --
he owned three ranches at one time.
And he was also very much
a land conservationist.
Very much into happy grass,
and ranching techniques.
And he had inserted some of this
information in the first manuscript,
that he loved horses, he put
in a bit of horse history.
And Justice O'Connor
had written a forward.
So what we did, we took
the path any author takes.
We sent out the manuscript
to publishers
and no one was really biting,
and I did a little editing,
got a little frustrated,
sent it to another editor.
Alan took a break with
the manuscript,
put it away for a little bit,
and we brought it back out
and once again there's this story.
And out of my mouth one day came,
"Alan, let me help you write it."
It was not something
I anticipated writing.
I grew up in the Midwest riding
an orange Schwinn Varsity
around suburbia [laughter].
I had been on one horse
named Waffles
in Girl Scout camp [laughter].
I must have said, "What's a
squeeze chute," about 20 times, and,
"How are these horses
running around corrals?"
I have a file filled with
diagrams that Alan drew.
But upon listening -- if we
were going to work together,
I really needed to listen.
And as you might have
already figured out,
Alan is quite the storyteller.
So I would listen to him and
we just talked for quite awhile
so I could begin to understand
this amazing life he had lived,
and he loved horses.
He said, "I always
talk to my horses."
And as I listened, he
would tell stories,
and sometimes he would brush over
a story, like the story, "Oh,
that reminded me of the time I
roped the bull and the bull ran
into the cotton field and
threw up the red motorcycle,
and almost hit the
kids pulling cotton,"
and on he would go,
and I would say, "Wait!
Back up. Back up.
Tell me about the bull.
Tell me about this horse,
Tequila, tell me what it was like."
And these amazing heartfelt
stories of his ranch horses,
not just the wild horses, his
ranch horses started to emerge,
and I thought, oh my gosh, this
is the Marley and me of horses,
of horse loving [laughter].
You know, we have to share
this richness with people.
So then this kind of
story arc formed,
and it's of the wild horse
sanctuary, which Alan owned
for four years, and there
were plenty of adventures
to make a book by itself of that.
But inserted I felt like we needed
to show the individual stories
about ranch horses, and so we kind
of -- we figured that out together,
and Alan would do, like I
said, a lot of storytelling.
I did grow up in the Midwest and
his book is set in South Dakota,
so I had a feeling of
what that was like.
And I think we pulled
it off [laughter].
But he had some very good stories
and I think you should share one.
Share your favorite.
>> H. Alan Day: Okay.
We spent the whole first winter
that we got horses training on them,
talking to them, getting to
know them, the training process.
But we never really turned them out
on open prairie that whole winter,
we had them in corrals and very
small pastures, so the turnout day
for all of South Dakota is May 10th.
The grass is green, it's
traditional, you turn your cattle
or your horses to summer grazing
on May 10th, so that was the day
that we were going to
start our summer program.
And the very first thing was
to move the horses six miles
over to Mud Lake, a pasture that
was on the west side of the ranch,
and that would be the real
test of all our training,
because going to Mud Lake
was through open pastures,
five, six, 7000 acres each.
And if the horses wanted
to get away,
if the training had not worked,
and if the horses reverted back
to their old ways, they
would scatter and blow up
and just scatter to the winds.
So it was our day to
test the whole system.
And I was frightened to death
because I had never trained a
whole herd of horses before,
nor had anybody else that I
can find, to respond the way
that I was training these
horses, and I really didn't know
if the training would hold or not.
So anyway, we get up and with
much trepidation and fear
and excitement we get
up that morning
to take the horses the
six miles to Mud Lake.
But I have to tell you,
that first spring the Bureau
of Land Management had brought us
a bunch of mares that were in foal,
and the colts were busy being
born right during that period.
They were spring colts.
We had had a new baby
born the day before,
and so we didn't know
whether the mare could --
we knew the mare could go the
six miles, but a day old colt,
can he gallop six miles across the
prairie, will he get left behind,
what will happen, we didn't know.
We start off across the prairie
and things are going well
and we're moving and the horses are
right behind, and the thundering
of the herd, and the
excitement and everything.
Also, let me digress a minute.
One of my partners on the ranch
was a retired doctor, not a cowboy,
and he was so excited that
he wanted to be part of it,
but he didn't ride, so I had an
old Chevrolet Suburban and I said,
"You can come along
behind, if you kind of stay
out of sight or in the background.
And if we have any problem then
we'll have a Suburban there,
so it might be a good idea to have
you available, and you're a doctor,
and you know, we don't know
what's going to happen."
So here we are, caravan,
horses and me in the lead,
and Ralph in the background,
and the baby colt can't keep
up, kind of what we thought.
So we're halfway across and poor
little old gangly baby colt,
long-legged, and momma is back
there trying to urge him on,
and she'd run up to the
herd and then look back,
and nicker and go back to him.
And he just was falling
further behind, so I called one
of my cowboys and I said, "Go
back there and catch that colt,
tie him down, put him in the back
of the Suburban, we'll haul him
to Mud Lake and we'll turn him
loose there and momma will connect."
"Okay, good plan."
I go on. I look back, Russ
had put him in the Suburban,
but he hadn't tied
him down [laughter].
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Oh dear.
>> H. Alan Day: Ten minutes
later he's in the front seat
with Ralph [laughter] and he's
sitting there right next to Ralph
like a big Dalmatian dog and
he's licking the windshield
and nickering at momma [laughter].
And momma is frantic.
Momma sees him there and
she does not like it at all.
And she attacked the Suburban
[laughter], and she ran at it,
wheeled around and kicked the
grill out with her two back feet.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Oh my gosh!
>> H. Alan Day: I mean,
literally destroyed the grill,
and Ralph slammed on the brakes.
He didn't know what to do.
And he's looking at the colt
and he starts honking the horn.
But all the honking did
was scare the horses --
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Well, sure.
>> H. Alan Day: -- that
I'm with, you know,
so all of a sudden
disaster says, here I am.
[Laughter] But I thought I was
going to die laughing looking back
at Ralph sitting next to that
colt, as close as Lynn is to me.
And so what a wild time.
We arrive at Mud Lake, I open
the door, the colt tumbles out,
jumps out, his momma's about right
here where this man's sitting,
and he goes up and gets a little
nibble of milk, and she looks at me,
and I'll never forget her look.
She said, don't you ever offer
to babysit again [laughter]
with my baby.
[ Laughter ]
So those were -- [applause]
that's my favorite story.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> We're about to take questions.
Do you want to sum
up [inaudible] ranch?
>> H. Alan Day: [Inaudible]
time for questions?
Yes, I think I'll stop there.
We would love to answer any
questions that anybody has.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Well, maybe
we would, if they're good questions.
>> H. Alan Day: Okay.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor:
[Laughter] Do we have some?
>> There's a man.
>> Yes. Maybe my question
is not such a happy topic.
With the land management and
with the reproductive rate
of these wild horses, I assume
that eventually even our [inaudible]
sanctuary they outnumber the ability
to sustain them.
What happens to the excess
of these wild horses?
>> H. Alan Day: That is
a really good question,
and that answer is worthy
of a book, actually.
They continue to overpopulate
right now today, and the number
of excess unadoptable's,
which was what I had
on the sanctuary, now totals 49,000.
And we really don't
have an overall plan.
I have my plan, which nobody's
asked me for, but I have my plan,
and it's one thing to worry
about the excess horses,
but where we really need to do
the work is at the baby factory.
We need to reduce the birth rate,
not to eliminate the wild horses,
but to get their population
stabilized
at zero population growth, not
a minus, not a plus, but zero.
And we need to do more work
over on the baby factory side.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor:
Where are most
of the wild horses
living these days, Alan?
>> H. Alan Day: The biggest, over
50%, are in the state of Nevada,
but there are herds in Oregon, in
Arizona, in Wyoming, in Montana,
in California, so all
of the 10 western --
>> Lynn Wiese Sneyd: Oklahoma.
>> H. Alan Day: -- well, Oklahoma
is -- they're planted there.
>> Lynn Wiese Sneyd: Oh, yeah.
>> H. Alan Day: They're not native.
But they're in the 10 western
states, and there is one heard
on the East Coast, on
an island off of --
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Are any
of these wild horses
sold for sausage in --
>> H. Alan Day: No.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: --
Europe or something like that?
>> H. Alan Day: No.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Good.
>> H. Alan Day: Some
people think they're not.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Okay.
>> H. Alan Day: Anyone else?
>> Here's a gentleman.
>> H. Alan Day: Yes?
>> You had said that when you first
met the horses they would run a
mile, mile and a half away, because
they didn't feel you were friendly,
but you said you became
their friends.
So I was wondering just how long it
took you and the horses to decide
that you like each other,
or the horses like you,
so to speak, because you liked --
>> H. Alan Day: Most
important that is, yes.
Good question.
We would train 40 or 80 or 100 at
a time, not all 1500 at a time,
but 40 or 80, and the training would
sometimes take two weeks or two
and a half weeks, and we
would have them in a place
where they couldn't run a mile and a
half, but, you know, couldn't leave.
And some of the training
is talking nicely to them,
but a lot of it is riding real
slowly toward them and not --
if you face a horse
directly that's a challenge,
so you never exactly face a horse.
They don't understand your words,
but they sure understand the tone
of your voice, and so
speaking in a nice tone.
But -- and, also, their attention
span probably about like mine,
it's only about 15 minutes.
So we would only train them
15 or 20 minutes at a time,
and then we would unsaddle
and do something else
and then go back the same day,
sometimes twice or three times,
and have a short training session.
But we never trained them more
than 20 minutes at a time.
But two weeks to two and a half
weeks they would accept us.
And they have their own language.
It's not verbal, their
language of acceptance is,
they'll have one ear up, one ear
forward, they'll start chewing
with their mouth and there
won't be anything in their mouth
but they'll be chewing, and
they'll usually paw one front foot,
and that's them saying, I
accept you as my friend.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Now,
run through that once more
so they're going to know.
[Laughter] Come on,
tell them once more.
>> H. Alan Day: Yeah.
Well, they really -- they taught
us a lot of their language,
this non-verbal language,
but they will --
they'll look directly at you,
one ear up, one ear forward,
mouth chewing, and usually
right front foot pawing,
unless they're left-footed
[laughter].
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Okay.
>> H. Alan Day: Yes?
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Now, you
got that straight [inaudible]?
Okay.
>> H. Alan Day: Yes, another?
>> I'm so thrilled that you --
you're taking care of the
horses on the sanctuary.
That just -- I don't know, I
love horses and it touches me.
And your remarks about horse prison,
the animals that are gathered
and kept in, you know, confinement.
But you mentioned and just
touched on that we need
to address the population,
the baby factory,
and I wonder if you have
any thoughts or feelings
about the use of contraception.
I know, you know, contraception
is used in some horses,
but how about out on the
range to prevent the need
to have sanctuaries and [inaudible]?
>> H. Alan Day: Contraception
is what I'm referring to,
and there are some contraceptives
that are like two years
that will work for two
years, and then cycle out.
And the problem with doing
contraception out on the range is,
a lot of the places where the horses
run are very rocky, very steep,
very rough, and it's so
difficult to gather them.
You got to get your hands on
them to give them contraception
and to see how many there are.
So the biggest problem is --
there's advances in contraception,
and I'm glad of that, but the
biggest problem is just gathering.
You know, they're out there
and you can send out 40 cowboys
and they'd come back with no horses,
the wild horses just out run them.
They just are truly wild.
So the difficult part is to bring
them in to some control place
where you can give the
contraception and that's a problem.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Is
that happening some places?
>> H. Alan Day: We done?
>> Yes.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor:
Is that happening --
>> H. Alan Day: Well, the places
where they're easy gather,
then they can bring them in
and give them contraception,
but they're not doing enough of it.
I think we're out of time, guys.
>> Yes.
>> Sandra Day O'Connor:
Thank you very much.
>> H. Alan Day: Thank you so much.
[ Applause ]
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