Dunstan

Dunstan was born in the wilds of Nevada and rounded up by the BLM in 2009 as a 2-year-old. He is from the Bitner Herd Management Area (HMA) and was adopted by American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) Board President Ellie Phipps Price and husband Chris Towt from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) holding facility in Cañon City, Colorado. Dunstan was in a sea of over 3,000 mustangs, standing in crowded dirt pens, captured from many western states. Cañon City is a prison facility and they used to have a program for the inmates to gentle the horses that were adopted.

Ellie and Chris wanted to see the condition of the horses, meet with the BLM to interview them about their wild horse management methods, and tour the facility. They scheduled our visit on their 'National Adoption Day'. Only 9 horses were adopted that day... one of them was Dunstan.

They couldn't leave without adopting a horse, an impossible choice, so they chose the chunky bay 2-year-old, with two white socks and a dun stripe. Having never started a wild horse before, Ellie enrolled him in the prisoner program, and he arrived in California a month later, wearing a halter, and walking tentatively off the trailer and into his new life as an ambassador for so many mustangs that have lost their place on our western public lands. He was also the first of hundreds of mustangs that Ellie and Chris eventually pulled from BLM holding pens, kill pens, and auctions and brought to their wild horse and burro sanctuary, Montgomery Creek Ranch.

Luckily, Dunstan was an easy-going kind of guy, he is a 'whoa' horse, not a 'go' horse. He was easy to gentle and Ellie was the first person to ride him. She later learned that not all young wild horses are as easy to start.

Dunstan is named after Ellie and Chris' winery and lives with them now in Sonoma, CA. He is a great trail horse -- sure footed, easy on the eye, comfortable, and capable. He can jump a small course of jumps or a log in the field, rides English or Western, is their best horse for a guest rider, and will always be Ellie's first and favorite mustang. The first of many.