Tyger: Wild Stallion of the Badlands

The book, fiction, based on fact, is the story of a domestic young stallion that is turned loose in the Badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota as part of an effort to upgrade the quality of the wild horses that roam there. Interwoven are the experiences and emotions of five people who have been, and continue to be, involved with the young stallion named Tyger. They face the ongoing moral question of whether their placing the horse in a setting that may cost him his life is justifiable. One of the five is a young girl who sees Tyger as her horse. In the Badlands, the colts adventures include spending a year with an old recluse stallion, being trapped in a small valley by snow and nearly starving during a severe winter, surviving an attack by a mountain lion, fighting and dominating other wild stallions to establish a band of his own, suffering despair when his bands lead mare dies while giving birth to his first foal, escaping a National P! ark sanctioned roundup by horseback riders and a helicopter, and leading his band to safety when horse thieves invade the park. Later, he suffers a serious leg injury after tangling with a grass-covered section of rusty barbed wire. He loses his band to raiding stallions and is near death. The people involved remove him from the Badlands and nurse him back to health. They then face the question of whether he should be allowed to return to the wild because the injury to his rear leg has left him less mobile than he was. Their decision and what happens with the stallion as he fights to regain his band form the conclusion.