A Horse Called Dragon

We follow a wild horse from its birth to leading its own herd to becoming a pillar (in the phallic sense) in the creation of a new horse breed called Pony of the Americas in the 1950s.

This historical fiction is based on an actual horse named Dragon POA 103 (his registration number in the Pony of America Club). It's a fairly harrowing nature docudrama with a surprising amount of violence and death. So maybe don't read it to a My Little Pony fan.

It's a fictional account of a real horse, an Appaloosa mustang from the Sierra Madre mountains in Michoacán. Who was caught and brought into captivity to become a founding sire of the POA breed. This little book tells of his early life, years as a stallion defending his band, modes of survival. His capture and slow adjustment to a new way of life (the mares tamed pretty quickly in this story, which I found amusingly implausible but oh well). For such a short book, it's a surprisingly satisfying read. Very well-written. I like how it shows things from the stallion's viewpoint- what he would have understood, his reactions and decisions according to various circumstances. There's vampire bats in this book too, which feed on the horses at show more night and sometimes endanger the newborn foals. In that area of Mexico the bats are still a common threat to livestock.

from the Dogear Diary show less

What I liked about this story was that it went beyond being another book about a wild stallion. It combines the history of one new breed of horse with the retelling of one horse's life. That retelling is done not strictly from the horse's point of view and not strictly from the human's point of view, but through a combination of both. As a reader, you are an outsider seeing life through a horse's eyes and mind. Dragon's actions are explained away from his way of thinking, the way he would see it if words could be put to the instinct, without putting words into the horse's mouth or giving false sense of reality. It is because of this blending that I enjoyed this book which was a quick read not only because it is short, but because I show more couldn't put it down. show less

I really liked this book. It's short but covers a long span of time, from when Dragon the mustang appaloosa was born all the way through when he got captured at about twelve years old, and on. I love that the book was told from Dragon's POV, it really made the story a lot more interesting. I felt really bad when Dragon and his mares were captured, and a bit frustrated that it seemed like he would be sold for horse meat, but thankfully someone else came to buy him and his mares, and that's when I learned that this is the story of a stallion that was responsible fora wonderfully diverse bloodline of the Pony of Americas. A part of me hated that he had to be penned up at all, but Burr seemed like a nice enough guy and Dragon was left show more pretty much alone for the remainder of the book. show less