Bringing Home Two Wild & Untouched BLM Donkeys

I left my horse trailer at home. I should have known better.

Jun 09, 2025

I’ll be writing a full narrative feature about this experience for our July 1st print issue of The Westrn. Subscribe to The Westrn and you’ll receive 4 issues of our newsprint magazine, or you can pre-order a single issue for $10 here to try it out.

I spent the past weekend in Livingston, Mont. attending the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse & Burro Adoption event at the fairgrounds. I told myself I was attending as media, and that I’d be leaving my trailer at home.

Things happened. My friend Elise wanted a donk. Kestrel keeps their fully trained and insanely lovable donkey Rocco here at the Mini Ranch, and we’ve all been excited to pack into the backcountry with him. Why not train a few more and have a few more four-leggeds to carry the weight?

On Saturday night, I drove home to pick up my trailer to bring one donkey home. On Sunday, I was handed the paperwork for two donkeys.

At this time, it still seems like a pretty good idea. Time will tell.

A Future Donkey Packer, Also In Training

Rocco (left) and Elise’s unnamed shag touch noses for the first time.

Kestrel and I picked up Mojo Dojo Mule and Rocco the donkey in a killer deal from a hunter in Utah who’d packed them all around the mountains, hauling elk, riding in and out.

They’re both good boys, but Rocco is something else. Donkeys and deities have been tied closely together for a few thousand years. Spend some time with the Roc and you’ll understand why.

He’s shown me the thinking ways of the donkey. If something feels unsafe or unfamiliar, he stands and thinks, and thinks, and thinks. His level of self-preservation is equal to that of a turtle who can simply go into his shell until all feels safe again. I see him go into himself to work through a problem, then he commits to his solution after he’s thought hard and long about whatever it might be.

Sometimes, we disagree, and I have to show him creatively how things might be better my way. Eventually, he acquiesces, when I’ve done my side of the partnership well enough. He’s resolutely curious, deeply affectionate, obsessed with everything smaller than he is, and gentle as the day as long come June 21st.

He’s also a big boy. He can pack out most of an elk easily. And he’ll follow you to ends of the earth to do it. I was amazed watching him pick through rocks in rough country like a mountain goat hunting elk last fall. I had this wild realization — he’s easier than the horses, he’s more nimble than the mule, and he’s never going to buck me off in a weird circumstance.

I became a future donkey packer that day.

Older & Wilder or Wiser & Zen…ner?

Donkeys, out of all the equines, are the longest lived of all. The BLM veterinarian said that even wild donkeys can live into their 40s. The youngest donkeys at the event were 9; the age range spanned up to 23.

It’s hard, for me, to not fall in love with the oldest ones in the herd. They weren’t kicking or biting, or shoving to the front. They sat with kind eyes and zen energy flowing from their being. Younger donkeys rested their heads on the old ones’ backs. By the end of the event, one giant black donkey (aged 19) was letting onlookers scratch his ears and back.

The oldest donkey was adopted by another person, who like me, was feeling the sweet zen of the old men. Others also found homes. By the end of the event, only five donkeys were left, out of fifteen.

Two of them are now standing in my run.

The Shagamuffins

Elise picked out a tall shaggy donkey who had a real mane, a longer coat, and easily one of the sweetest faces in the herd, with a forelock long enough to belong to a horse.

He’s tall, skinny at the moment, in need of more dewormer and a deep cleaning. But he was curious, and he watched us with high attention, and when we’d picked two different donkeys out, I asked Elise if she thought we were making a mistake. And the big shag violently nodded his head at us, as if telling us that yes, we were making a big mistake. By not choosing him.

The two we’d picked ended up going to other people who beat us to the line. Who know the competition was so fierce? The shag got his wish. He’s home. In my pen, with a little black donkey.

The little feller sat so quietly in the herd that you would probably pass him over. But something stood out to me, and clearly me only. Maybe it was his matted coat, in need of a trim with the summer heat coming. He also had nice straight square legs, with a well constructed hind end.

What pushed me over the edge? I saw that he was from Sinbad, Utah. Long my favorite comedian, the place gave me an immediate name, and once named, all bets are off.

What’s First?

First touches on these currently haggard and matted boys are yet to come.

But yesterday, they came and stood within a few feet of me as I read a book on the ground outside their pen. They are attentive, quiet, happy to eat and drink, and they both rolled with a playful sense of happiness the moment they got out of the trailer.

Sinbad doesn’t even know about the glow-up he’s about to get.

As some of the great trainers say, I plan on going slow early to move quickly later on. I’ll let them pick up on the rhythms of farm life, enjoy the quiet life after being at the event, and spend time with them each day, in short periods, building up tolerance and rapport before getting deeper into the process.

I’m excited to share about it here. The glow up should be more than outstanding. Stay tuned.