Wild Mustangs

Posted by Ted Kiracofe

on Feb 01, 2016

In 1989, Alan Day created a unique industry. He took 1500 excess, unadoptable government-owned wild horses and put them on his 35,000-acre ranch in the Sand Hills of South Dakota. There, he managed, cared for and even trained them to follow a cowboy on horseback. Alan had the horses - and many adventures with them - for four years. Today, he advocates establishing private sanctuaries as a solution to the huge challenges facing the Bureau of Land Management's Wild Horse Program.

BIOGRAPHY

If it’s possible to say that someone can be born a cowboy, then Alan Day was born one. He was part of the third generation to grow up on the 20,000-acre Lazy B cattle ranch that straddled the high deserts of southern Arizona and New Mexico. The ranching and cowboy lifestyle appealed to him so much that after graduating from the University of Arizona, he returned to manage the Lazy B for the next 40 years. During his career, he received numerous awards for his dedicated stewardship of the land. Alan and his sister, Sandra Day O’Connor, tell the story of the Day family and of growing up on the harsh yet beautiful ranch in their co-authored New York Times bestselling memoir, Lazy B. Alan continues his ranching and cowboying adventures in his new book, The Horse Lover: A Cowboy’s Quest to Save the Wild Mustangs, the story of how he created the first government-sponsored sanctuary for unadoptable wild mustangs and trained and cared for 1500 wild horses. Among other awards, the book has received the New Mexico – Arizona Book Award, the Arizona Author’s Award, was named a Southwest Book of the Year, and is hailed by Booklist as “an instant classic.”