Posted on 11/02/2003 6:54:37 AM PST by SandRat
Carl Norton, the lead training officer, observes U.S. Border Patrol agents who are attempting to qualify for the agency's horse patrol units in the Tucson Sector. Friday was the last day of training for the three-week course. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review)
HEREFORD -- What is past is not necessarily just history.
In today's world, the U.S. Border Patrol is employing an old method to help monitor the U.S.-Mexico border to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs.
The agency is re-establishing horse patrols to reach many of the trails used by people and drug smugglers in remote areas of Arizona and other states. Some of the areas are off-limits to vehicles or cannot be reached in a vehicle.
"We're progressing to the past," said Supervisory Patrol Agent Rene Noriega, who works out of the Nogales Station. He also is the coordinator for all the horse patrol units in the agency's Tucson Sector, which includes Cochise County.
When the U.S. Border Patrol started more than 75 years ago much of its patrolling was done on the backs of horses and since much of the area that needs to be watched today is in remote regions, horses are once again seen as valuable assets, he said.
For a three-week period in October, about 10 Border Patrol agents went through a training course, some of which uses military cavalry maneuvers of the late 1800s. The agents graduated Friday.
Carl Norton, the lead instructor for the course who is a senior patrol agent at the Naco Station, is no novice when it comes to working with horses.
Even though the U.S. Border Patrol decided to use horses again in 1998, Norton has been around the animals beginning when he grew up on an Arkansas farm.
"I don't ever remember having a bicycle, but I remember always having a horse," he said.
It's his more than four decades of experience that helps him train others to become members of the agency's horse patrol units. He became a U.S. Border Patrol horse trainer in 1998.
Some of the applicants are familiar with horses, but for others, "we have to take them up to one and say this is a horse," said Norton, who has taught more than 10 classes.
Many who apply for the special units have ridden horses before. But for those who haven't, it takes a little more training to make the rider comfortable, Norton said.
The application process is purposefully hard to help weed out people who may not have the temperament to be a member of a horse patrol unit, he said. The process includes written tests and one-on-one interviews before a person is selected to attend a training course.
Even when agents make it through the initial process and are chosen, some of them will decide riding a horse is not for them and leave the course.
In some cases, Norton said he and other instructors are surprised to see a person make it through the training course, having initially deciding an individual was not going to make it.
One example in the recent class was Jessica Messinger. Norton said he thought she was going to quit in the first week.
On Thursday, the day before the end of the course, as he yelled instructions in an arena on Rudy Chon's El Ranchon, where most of the training was held, Messinger held her own with the other riders, including Bobbi Koelin, who began horse barrel-racing when she was 10.
The horses' temperaments are being tested, too, Norton said. Horse and rider have to work as a team, and they each have to know what the other is thinking to be a team.
During the course, the agents are taught how to develop a friendship, "and once you find a match-up you try to keep it," Norton said.
Other agents might end up riding a horse assigned to an officer, but then the new rider has an understanding of how to handle the animal, he said.
What it comes down to is trust.
For an agent, the horse becomes a large four-footed sensor.
"Horses are big cowards. They are prey animals," Norton said.
Because they fear animals that may want to prey upon them, they are always alert.
When an agent is in the saddle, he or she is above the ground and has a better view. And, Norton said, the agent just has to watch the horse's reaction to what may be ahead or to the sides.
If a horse sees, smells or spots something that may be of danger to the animal, the horse's head will go in that direction and its ears will go forward.
Sometimes it may be an animal or people in the bush, but the horse only knows there is something dangerous. That sense gives the rider additional information while patrolling, Norton said.
Horses have better senses and can register danger far better, farther and faster than humans, whose senses are not as strong, Norton said.
Part of the training program is to join the human and horse into a team where each can benefit from the other's senses. It is not just a matter of saddling a horse, mounting the animal and riding off, Norton said.
The trainees are taught to care for the horse -- from grooming to feeding to cleaning the stable.
The course includes how to pack an animal and how to give horse first aid, Norton said. The medical care session for the animal is taught by the Fort Huachuca veterinary office.
When it came to packing an animal, the recent class was taught by an instructor who is a retired U.S. Border Patrol agent who just returned from Pakistan, where he taught that nation's border guards how to pack horses for long patrols, Norton said.
The Border Patrol trainees also are taught about maintaining a horse's hooves, which is a class taught by a farrier.
Before the trainees ride a saddled horse, they ride the animal bare-back, learning to control the horse with their legs.
"There are a lot of falls (during the bare-back sessions), and that is part of the training as well, how to fall properly," the instructor said.
The training also includes how to fire a weapon while on a horse.
There also is an overnight training where the riders have to set up picket lines, care for the animals and patrol in the dark, Norton said. That session is done on the west side of the Huachuca Mountains.
As the wind whipped around the arena on Thursday and many of Norton's instructions were hard to hear, leading him to use hand and arm signals, the agents and their mounts tried to keep their faces out of the stinging dust.
To Norton, the blowing dust and windy conditions were good because "it isn't always going to be calm, it's going to be hot, cold, wet, dry, windy, sunny or dark" when the horse patrol units are on duty.
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