Beyond Rope and Fence

This work chronicles the lives of free-roaming prairie horses and the humans who seek to control them, tracing seasonal release, winter survival, roundup, branding and breaking, and the physical and spiritual costs of domestication. Episodes contrast herd instincts, maternal bonds and wilderness resilience with methods of capture and confinement, and explore encounters with predators, the slow northward push of human settlement, and instances of resistance and retribution. Interwoven essays examine how labour imposed without sympathy diminishes animal vitality, how fences and iron reshape landscapes, and how strength and vulnerability persist amid changing relations between animals and people.