It's also an appreciation of one of nature's finest mammals to buddy-up with man and help in our tasks on the planet. It's a tribute to the men, women, history, towns and enviornment where these events are held.

If anyone has had more fun with donkeys, drama and Democrats than I, I don't know how they can stand it.

--Curtis Imrie
January 1998

There’s thousands of them, and I’ve watched the BLM refine their adoption system over the years. In my 20s I grew tired splitting the purses with the owner of the domestic donkeys that I raced. Those days you could show up in Wenden, Arizona, with a battered pickup and a wooden stock rack without an appointment, hunt up the wrangler, pick your animals and for $75 a piece load them. There weren’t many formalities about what you might call "title."

My first truckload of wild burros started a deep and long respect for these alert, featherweight, agile, fleet creatures. They essentially taught me what I know about "training" Equus asinus. There is always a baseline truth about the wild ones. Regardless of how old they are, you know they’ve been raised right. The imperatives of being born in the wild are much different from our sheltered, imprinted, fussed-over, under used and misunderstood domestic equines.

George Washington "Hayduke" was my first wild burro. I got him when he was two, and his idea of arm’s length was nine miles. He was a 12-hand, gray-brown critter who slowly came to terms with me after much hand feeding, cart work, bonzai mountain trail running over the Continental Divide to Aspen and many hit-and-miss, process-of-elimination experiments. I knew he was becoming a nice person when I was able to put hobbles on his front and back legs, pick up his butt and slide him into a tiny Toyota pickup truck with a camper shell on it. All it took was tapping on the brakes a few times to keep him on his side. Tourists passing us on Independence Pass would be waving and honking and pointing a Hayduke’s head hanging over the raised tailgate. .

Hayduke died this past summer at the age of 27. Kendra Cowhey bought him from me years ago and ran many races with him, this team often in the lead. I wonder if she knows that Hayduke was the first wild burro to win the World Championship Pack Burro Race – an event that’s been going on for 52 years. I was so certain we would win that race in 1980 that I held up a sign I had written the night before advising people to write their congressman to improve the situation for our wild burros. Now 20 years later I'm running a real race to be that congressman. I remember Hayduke like a mountain sunrise; like a great and dear friend amidst the disappointments, shortfalls and occasional breakthroughs in my life. He had the unbelievable "bottom" endurance that most of the wild ones have. I was so proud of him and all that he taught me about liberty and license.
Hayduke was also the first donkey to place in the top 200 of the 40,000 person “Bay to Breakers” street race in San Francisco. Perennial Fairplay champ at the time, Ardel Boes, thought I fed him raw meat… at least that’s what he cracked when this wild thing and I chased him down on Fairplay’s main street. My theory then and now is that the wild mammal is truer in overall soundness and God’s/nature’s plan than all the over-bred, over-trained, over-domesticized domestic critters. Call it a vitality. And it’s a vitality we mess with at our peril in all walks of life.

Is it romanticizing things too much to commit to 50 wild ass jennies to cross with my three studs – one lummox mammoth, one wild thing jack raised in captivity (Oscar, two-time World Champ) and my ideal jack (a domestic cross between Oscar and a mammoth jenny)? Is it naïve to think these 50 jennies could raise standards for the Third World’s 40 million donkeys out there daily, patiently, long sufferingly helping the bulk of the world’s population with their labors? The industrialized minority with their weapons and petrochemicals can do fine without my cross-donks. It’s the wild things out of the southwest of the “Empire of Waste” that when crossed with George Washington’s mammoth stock will have the bone, the agility, size, power and alertness to provide a low-maintenance power source for the rest of the world.
Imagine if these wild burros were raised to race! Would that take the fun out of it for them? Mental health, play and physical fitness are mostly a matter of respecting evolution, interconnectedness, play and treasuring time. Some wild thangs never give it up and get with my program. I try to be sensitive about pressuring them. Training is basically a matter of knowing when to push and when to back off. I've come to respect that in them and in my own life. Doesn't mean I'm not prepared to go the distance, but sometimes a force fromnature, a force of nature, is telling us something: choose carefully and pay attention.

As they accumulate so does the time I spend with them and on them. The ideal is still three, but as long as I’ve had more, I’ve been able to absorb some nitty gritty about mammalian/thing-with-a-central-nervous system-and-backbone group dynamics. I know they’re not people. At best, a horse is like a three-year-old kid; a burro is like a four-year-old. Nonetheless, ranch yard behavior and jackass politics are a kick to observe.

The three major elements are territory, the urge to merge and feeding time. Most of my jacks will try to stake out their turf and defend what they hold, possibly encroaching outside their given territory. This territorial action seems more prevalent when jennies are run with the jack and particularly when jennies are in estrus. When there are other jacks nearby, but not next door, there is a relative, constant announcing/braying/honking/challenging behavior.

Waymore L. Democrat is usually my herd sire, and I have him run with the jennies. He is pretty demonstrative and noisy for an otherwise mellow fellow. He seems to respect the three strands of wire fence when I take the other jacks and jennies near hi. I can’t take them too close. Maybe I trust him too much to not come through the fence, despite all his brogadaccio and display behavior. Besides he has three acres on which to run. I’m not sure if he was gelded that the situation would be much different.

I keep my jacks intact because they all have qualities that make them worthy breeding animals. It sure makes for a different kind of stability in my little nation-state when most of the males are geldings. The geldings are like eunuchs. They get their job done and you don’t have all the fuss of jack behavior or cycling in the jennies. The cycling creates its own anarchy, but that deserves its own chapter.

Although less dramatic, the most important, down and dirty behavior in herd dynamics is the feeding trough. As free as I like to raise these animals, I still lock them up and consequently have to feed them, mostly grass hay and some grain for treats and the cold I don’t know much about government or politics, but it seems to me most professional politicians are donkeys at the trough. They will say and or do anything to hog their share, use their status, power and guile to get as much as they can.
In my herd of female donkeys, it’s usually the bell jenny, the boss lady, who gets the most food. And when she’s pregnant she’s even more assertive in her right to chow down. These animals can and will share. I get a kick out of seeing up to eight heads in the trough, noisily munching away after they’ve snorted, squealed and coughed and kicked at one another to assert their rank in the feeding order. There’s a flurry of chasing one another away before they settle down and contentedly munch. Harry Truman said, "No man should be president who doesn't understand hogs." Now Harry was a good Democrat. How can we be sure he wasn't talking about donkeys or his Missouri mules?

One more thought on burro “politics.” An increase in the population of animals changes the dynamics of everything. Fields get eaten down faster, more grain is required, more vet bills, less attention to each animal. Any more than three, the drain on your time accelerates practically exponentially. At the risk of stating the obvious, the ranchyard increasing population of the world is in my view the root of almost all our problems. Stress on infrastructure, stress on food availability, stress on health care and the abuses of the powerful are that much more aggravating when you’re up to your ears in asses.

In the early 70s, Wild Horse Annie was trying to get the government to institute the free-roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act, forever protecting these lving pieces of history from being hunted, trapped or shot for sport or commercial purposes.

I heard about this band of feral asses that was denuding the desert landscape and becoming a threat to the desert ecosystem. This was 1972, and the place was Wild Rose Canyon.

They haven't built a Holiday Inn near Wild Rose Canyon yet, and it's still one of those stark, rocky, lunar, dessicated drainages near Death Valley. It has a bracing cleanness that perhaps only T.E. Lawrence would have appreciated, a place for wild burros, a place where the stars are so close to your face at night that you'd bump your head on one if you raised it from your sleeping bag.

I was 26… on the loose. All I owned was a ruck sack and a Triumph motorcycle. I wanted to wake up anywhere but any city on the planet. The world was mine because I was poor. I was just becoming involved in the Colorado Pack Burro Racing "circuit," which at that time was just two races. I was near the lowest point in the continental U.S. looking for wild ass.
During the night I could hear these horrendous scree-onk, scree-onk onk onk onks ricocheting off the canyon walls. There were three variations on the sound. One was deeper, more bass: one was longer: and one was more plaintive and lonely. They were all the most absurd, part howl, part roar, part fart, part hiccup for humanity's folly. I was sure that night that God must have a sense of humor. I was also sure the wild jacks were out there.
In the morning, looking up from my coffee, I could see a band of burros blending inwith the sage, rocky, dusty landscape, moving up one of the lattice work of trails that they'd made in the canyon. Their heads were nodding up an down. A jenny was at the head of the line and an old grey, lop-earred jack was skirting the edges of the band. There were two young black jacks that were goofing around on the other side of the band. I don't know what provoked it, but the lop-earred jack bolted through the band and tore into the larger of the young jacks. For awhile the young jack was giving as good as he got. You could hear hooves thumping on ribs and chest, incredible back kicks that reverberated in the canyon… just whack whack whack like hitting a tree with a baseball bat. There was snot, there was drool, hoarse breathing as they grabbed each other's neck with Rottweiler jaws. They bit bloody hunks out of each other's necks. The youngster got a hold of "Lop Ear's" last freestanding, straight, semaphore and started chewing on that. Round and round they went, LopEar trying to get a bite on Junior's back leg. It's not as if a donkey's ear isn't an easy target to bite. You could hardly see them now because of the dust, rocks clattering down the hillside. Lop Ear was starting to scream from some un-Godly raging pain. They were soaked in sweat and caked in dust.

One of them slipped, and they started to roll down the hill, ass over teakettle, kicking, thrashing, struggling to find their footing. They hit the canyon floor, and both stood up. There was this lull and mutual surprise. Lop Ear's ear came loose; it was shredded, glistening with blood. Their heads were about two feet apart, hanging low, legs quivering, sides heaving. I got to thinking that maybe in their walnut-sized brains these two jackasses knew perhaps they had gone too far. Wouldn't one of them stop? Try a bluff? Nope. The dogs of war had been loosed. They were drunk. They loved this. Maybe they would kill one another, but they did love this. The youngster somehow got a vice-grip bite on the back of the old jack's neck and threw him to the ground, driving him into the ground and stomping on him. Somehow in all the thrashing, from below, the old jack got his head in Junior's grin. This time the shriek was un-Godly pain, an animal pain, a mortal pain. Junior ripped away from the fray, blood gushing from his groin. Lop Ear's muzzle was burgundy red. He was still thrashing his head back and forth; a crushed Valencia orange-sized testicle flew out of his mouth. Game, set and match to Lop Ear. I knew what I needed to run 30 miles over rocky terrain and catch the miner who dominated the sport at the time. I needed a jack as good as Joe Glavnick's jack, Ringo. I think I found him there on that desert floor, but I didn't know how I was going to get a rope on him or get him back to Colorado. The wild burros had seen people before. They weren't particularly afraid of me, but there was no way I was going to get more than a half mile close to them. I'd move; they'd move. I had witnessed the fracas with binoculars, but I didn't have a clue how I was to catch my running stock. Trapping seemed the only way possible. A few days later, after the wild burro adoption program was starting up, I went back to a holding pen near Death Valley. I was still looking for a great jack. I can't be certain, but there was a lop-eared jack in the corral. He still thought he was boss. There were two black jacks -- one was gelded. I adopted all three. The lop-eared jack is now semi-retired at Hal Walter's ranch. The great Joe Glavnick bought one of the black jacks when Ringo died. They call "Lop Ear" Jumpin Jack Flash. And the black jack? Well, they called him Blackjack. I learned everything I needed to know about pack burro racing from Joe Glavnick. He took what I thought to be an un-trainable mean little black stud and in one summer had that burro trained to pull, to go left, to go right, to stop, to canter and to trot on cue. Joe was past his prime, but that jack kept him in the game long after it was his time to go. And when Joe's phlebitis was so bad he couldn't run, he gave the jack to young Greg Randall, a cross-country skiing, endurance machine who didn't know diddley about pack burro racing, and the kid did great.

Managing these jacks requires some common sense and mindfulness and constant vigilance, some steel corrals and the usual patience, persistence, praise, perseverance and persistence again that’s required with all donkeys.

The jacks, if kept separate from the jennies, will have their pecking order battles, but they settle down, occasionally rough house, get along and even appear to be dopey buddies. I usually like to let one jack run with my jennies and be herd sire even if for a day. It gives me 100 percent fertility rate in the jennies and an attention to the necessary rough and tumble courtship process to keep the jennies healthy and cycling properly.

The trouble begins when another jack doesn’t respect the fence line, the boundary, goes beyond the honking, snorting, pacing, prancing display behavior bluff and yields to the worst of his greedy, aggressive, encroaching, paranoid, dominating behavior.

I never leave Little Menokin for more than four days without a little uneasiness. But nothing could have prepared my Rodney Fisher, for the twisted, compressed, bent metal sculpture he encountered on one of his visits while I was gone.

As a long-time admirer of jack men like Ben Czeschin and E.R.Stephens, I had gotten the notion that I could run jacks together. My tow-time World Champion pack burro, Oscar L. Democrat, and his son, 1997 National Western Stock Show Grand Champion, Peckinpah L. Democrat, had always seemed to get along in a rough and tumble way. However, a week after I introduced Waymore, the son of Don Townley’s 16-hand Monroe, the dynamics changed.

Recently the six-year-old stud, Waymore, had been running with the jennies as herd sire. He and Oscar immediately started rearing, biting and kicking one another. Peckinpah watched from the sidelines, and the steel corral cut off the running room. I was able to break up the fighting with the water hose. I noticed that the older, smaller jack, Oscar, though not the aggressor, always got the better of Waymore.

The jacks, on the other hand, present the usual, cautious, docile donkey appearance regardless of how spirited or explosive they may be in rut, but they seem to enjoy the excitement of the chase, the race and aggression with other burros more. The gelding is another story. He may be the most versatile of all donkeys, the least amount of hassle and the most dependable. However, if you have a burro of breeding quality or racing quality, I’d keep him intact.

The jenny imprints the personality and way of going on her offspring. Jennies are much more an indicator of what the foal will be than the jack. I still think someone will produce a jenny that will race and win. But in traditionally sexist pack burro racing, we’re always a little late with feminine issues.

Curtis Imrie, Fairplay, 1980 World Champion Pack Burro Racer

As an over-the-hill (once you’re over the hill you pickup speed?) pack burro racer and long-time aficionado, my interest and hopes now lie with the good jennies. I want my jennies to be younger and better. The beauty of the jenny is that they are terrific pack and ranch animals, plus they’re productive – they produce. You can work them up to a week before they foal and two weeks after they foal. Plus they do fine in the company of other jennies. There’s very little rough house and fighting between them, behavior around the food trough being one exception. A band of jacks, however, can be cantankerous, late to the gym, out on all-night drinking bouts and carve their initials in trees.

You don’t have many hassles with jennies. They can be a little pushy when they’re cycling. The jenny can present you with the second most appealing bundle of joy on the planet. There’s a warmth, a beauty and innocence, a humor, a leggy spirit that comes with each burro foal. Apart from motorcycles and my pity-pat, it’s one of the few sure-fire, non-addictive things that makes me smile. I don’t want to know you if it doesn’t do the same for you.

I breed burros to come as close as I can to a horse with long ears and a self-preserving temperament. To get that you need the good jennies and a great jack. There’s as many kinds of burros as there are horses. They range from miniatures to drafty, spirited to quiet, black to white.

It’s fashionable to knock the government these days, but the BLM is doing its darndest to get good feral donkeys into the hands of qualified owners. My idea is to take four good feral jennies and breed them to as goo a jack, domestic or otherwise, that I can find. The off spring won’t have papers and they probably aren’t well marketed and promoted, but these jennies will produce the future racing pack burro, nativity donkey, homestead donkey, pack donkey, riding and driving donkey … most of all… great jacks. But to get there you need the four jennies to produce the one jack. If you want to improve your hand, keep increasing your herd of jennies by multiples of four. I look forward to taking a string of 20 jennies, packed to the gills, over the Continental Divide to some hunters’ or kids’ camp in the sky.