Born Free, Living Free: Wild Horse Scientists by Kay Fry

Jay knows he’s close enough now. Silently, in one fluid motion, he lifts the loaded rifle to his shoulder, takes aim, and squeezes the trigger.

A muffled pop then, a whoosh of compressed air. There’s no deafenng explosion, because this gun doesn’t fire bullets. It’s a lightweight .22, modified for a small dart containing PZP at close range.

The mare’s head flies up, more from the sound than from the sting of the needle. The dart pops back out almost immediately, as it is made to do. The wild horse trots off to the comfort of her band, no more concerned than if she’d been stung by a large, pesky horsefly.

PZP is what makes it possible for wild horses to continue living free on Assateague Island today.

In this latest addition to their notable nonfiction series, Scientists in the Field, Kay Frydenborg’s Wild Horse Scientists (Scientists in the Field Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), the author follows two scientists engaging in ground-breaking field research – Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, whose original specialty was embryonic transplantation, and Allison Turner, of the National Park Service, assigned to monitor the wild herd on Assateague. For  more than twenty years, these two had engaged in detailed observations and laboratory studies to devise a radically new birth control vaccine for wild horses, to be used both on the barrier islands of the Atlantic coast and in the American West.

With the demise of natural predators, the single greatest threat to North America’s wild herds has been overpopulation. The only intervention then available to those who wanted to perpetuate the wild herds had been annual drives to round up the horses, pen them up, and cull the bands by roping the foals and finding adoptive owners. But the stress and danger to the horses and an increasing backlog of unadopted horses convinced horse lovers that they needed a more benign form of population control, one that was 100 per cent effective and non-invasive, one that even enabled the affected mares to live longer, healthier lives in the wild.

Enter our intrepid animal behavior scientists, whose meticulous documentation of the individual horses, collection of specimens which analyzed hormone fluctuations in the native horse population, and careful experimentation under difficult conditions–intense heat, storms, damp, misty cold, swarms of mosquitoes, and dense vegetation – allowed for eventual proof of the efficacy of cutting-edge vaccines.

Frydenborg’s text is clear and highly readable, even suspenseful at times, and the color photographs of America’s iconic wild horses stud the pages with illuminating illustrations that amplify the text. Numerous text boxes provide middle readers with background information – on the evolutionary history and color variations of horses, archaeological findings, and intriguing Fast Facts – and extensive appendices with glossary, bibliography of books, web sites and other media, and a detailed index make Wild Horse Scientists (Scientists in the Field Series) not only fascinating reading for horse enthusiasts but a great source of inspiration for young would-be scientists who may be attracted to active outdoor field study.

Horse Sense: Wonder Horse: The True Story of the World's Smartest Horse by Emily Arnold McCully

Bill Key was born a slave on a plantation in 1833. Even as a little boy, he had a special way with animals. He could soothe and he could cure just about any creature.

After the Civil War, Bill Key became a practicing veterinarian and earned the nickname "Doc Key." In time his liniment, blended for horses, became a best-selling remedy for patients, animal and human, and actually made Bill Key a rich man.

As one of his profitable investments, Bill bought a beautiful but obviously abused Arabian mare, whom he named Lauretta, hoping that she would bear a future champion. But his dream was not to be: the foal, called Jim Key, was born with twisted legs and Lauretta soon died. Saddened by the death of his mare, Bill nevertheless raised the youngster with no hopes that he would ever be of any use. Barely able to walk, the colt nevertheless seemed alert and gamely watched Doc as he played fetch with his dogs daily until...

One day Doc felt a nudge on his shoulder. It was Jim Key with a stick in his mouth.

"You want to play fetch?" Doc smiled for the first time in weeks. He threw the stick and Jim stumbled after it. The foal had never taken more than two steps!

Jim picked up the stick and tottered back. He trotted a few feet! Offering the stick, he spread his lips in a grin.

Soon the colt learned other tricks. He knocked at the door every night until Doc let him in and became a nightly boarder until he was too large to get through the door. Doc then gave in and moved his own bed out to the barn to keep his amazing horse company.

Doc knew horses and he could see that Jim was unusually intelligent. Soon he figured out a way to open a drawer where his owner stored apples, had a feast, and closed the drawer behind himself.

"I wonder what else you could learn," Doc wondered. Jim lifted his chin as if to say "Try me!"

With all the patience and kindness he advocated to the owners of the horses he treated, Doc slowly taught Jim Key to recognize the letters of the alphabet one by one. Then he taught him colors and numbers and how to spell and do simple arithmetic with his number cards.

One day watching Jim add and subtract, Doc cried, "Jim, we should go on the road! People will be amazed by how much you know. They will see that animals have feelings and it's wrong to make them suffer!"

Doc and Jim Key were a sensation on the medicine show circuit, as Jim wowed the crowd by making change from a cash register, dancing and bowing for the ladies in the audience, and eventually playing theatres, fairs, and large arenas. Always an advocate for humane treatment of animals, Doc saw an opportunity to affiliate with the new Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and after the skeptical Society arranged for a team of Harvard professors to assure that there was no hoax involved in Jim's performance, they agreed to sponsor the two.

Doc and Jim Key became superstars, touring in their private Pullman car, always teaching their audiences new respect the feelings and intelligence of animals. Thousands of children came to watch Jim's feats and to sign a pledge to treat all animals with kindness. Although after nine years on the road, Doc and Jim Key retired to their farm, Doc was still willing to show off Jim's amazing abilities to any fans who came to visit.

Caldecott Award-winning author-illustrator Emily Arnold McCully in her latest, Wonder Horse: The True Story of the World's Smartest Horse (Henry Holt, 2010), provides plenty of her winning watercolor illustrations which greatly extend the text, and her direct but fascinating narrative will win new fans for Jim Key among her young readers. It's an amazing story of two remarkable beings, Bill Key who rose from slavery to become both wealthy and influential in the cause of animal welfare and his incredible wonder horse whose intelligence and performing skills has never been equaled. A must-read for animal lovers and an inspiring book for all.

Time Travelers: Wild Horses: Galloping Through Time by Kelly Milner Halls

Watching those sleek three-year-olds, long, delicate legs stretching out to cover the track in the famous races of the Triple Crown, it is hard to imagine that the first ancestor of the horse was an eight-inch high creature with four horny toes on its front legs and three on its rear legs. No majestic master of the steppes was this little "dawn horse" either; preyed upon by land and river carnivores, the shy Hyracotherium met its extinction 45 million years ago, long before any would-be human wrangler appeared. But its relatives persisted, evolving through the Mesohippus to Merychippus as a grazing herd animal progressively running faster as its toes evolved into speedy hooves.

By the time Pliohippus evolved, with its one sturdy and swift hoof on each foot, its kind, still small at 12 hands high, had acquired wide-set eyes to spot predators and special adaptations of the skull which enabled the characteristic range of whinnies with which the herd communicated, and this nearly modern horse ranged widely across North America. Despite its land of origin, however, its inheritor, Equus, the modern horse, which successfully emigrated across the land bridge to Asia, soon became extinct in the Americas, leaving its migrant descendants across Asia and Europe to become the horse of human history and legend.

Kelly Milner Halls' Wild Horses: Galloping Through Time (Darby Creek Exceptional Titles) goes on to tell the story of Equus and how they became the work horse and war horse of our own story, changing the face of civilization throughout Eurasia.

Halls features especially the intriguing story of the Przewalski horse, the last and almost vanished descendants of those wild horses first hunted for food and depicted by our early ancestors in those famous cave paintings at Lascaux. Like their cousins the zebras, Prazewalski horses have short stiff black manes, no forelocks, a dark strip down the center of the back, and even occasional barred hindquarters. A "rescued" species, less than 1900 Przewleskis are alive today, despite heroic efforts to shelter them in the wild and breed them in captivity after their numbers were decimated during World War II.

Halls also describes the historic horses of Europe and the Middle East--the Tarpan, the Sorraia, the Camargue and the Konik, and the Caspian and the Arabian, and does not neglect the wild horses of Africa--the various zebra relatives, the Namibia horse, and the wild ass. She then turns again back to North America where Equus began, with the story of the wild horses reintroduced by the Conquistadors and other explorers--the mustangs, Abaco Barbs, and even the burros of our own recent times.

Illustrated lushly with colored photos and detailed drawings, Wild Horses: Galloping Through Time (Darby Creek Exceptional Titles) is a fascinating study of the animal which, with its strength and speed, so thoroughly shaped much of human life. Author Halls also appends listings of sources of information and sites where wild horses may be studied and observed in North America, organizations which specialize in wild horse rescue, and an extensive bibliography of journal articles, books, and web sites, as well as a full index, to round out this thoroughly researched and readable nonfiction book.