Eight years ago Shane Adams lost his beloved horse, Mongo.
He didn’t pass away.
He ran away with a herd of mustangs.
On March 31, 2014, Shane was on a camping trip in the West Desert, two hours outside Salt Lake City.
He was already sleeping in his tent when he woke in the early morning by a ruckus outside.
He discovered Mongo, his quarter and half-Percheron-bred horse, trying to escape and run after a herd of mustangs.
Shane tried to run after him.
But how can a human on foot keep up with a running horse?
He did his best though and stopped only when he got caught in a snowstorm.
But Shane wasn’t too worried.
“I thought he’d just come right back. That was his mentality — he never went far. I didn’t think he would ever be gone,” Shane explained.
But Mongo didn’t come back.
Shane spent the next three years looking for Mongo.
He spread the word that Mongo is missing.
He got in touch with the local brand inspector and the Bureau of Land Management in Utah for help.
Plus he and his father, Scott, spent every weekend looking for Mongo.
But after three years of not finding even a tiny lead to Mongo’s whereabouts, he did what he had to do.
Shane gave up the search.
It had been three years already and Mongo may have passed on. Maybe that’s why they couldn’t find him.
Shane went back to his old job as a foreman for a large construction company.
This job needed him to be present and active at work and left him little time to continue the search for Mongo.
“You can’t run a $100-million-dollar job and be gone and only work two days a week because you’re [out] chasing wild mustangs,” Shane added.
Since Mongo disappeared, it’s been one problem after the other for Shane.
He was in a life-threatening car accident that left him with a brain injury. He got divorced and lost his home, too.
Scott, his father, also passed away.
Life had been very tough for him.
But it was going to take a turn for the better.
In September 2022, Shane received a Facebook message from a BLM Utah employee. Mongo had been found! What? But how? Shane couldn’t believe that Mongo was still alive.
“Mongo had been brought in on the last day of gathering on Dugway Proving Ground — a high-security location in Utah — after BLM Utah was granted permission to extend their gather due to the excess amount of horses,” Lisa Reid, public affairs specialist at BLM Utah, said.
They noticed that there was a horse that was unlike the other horses.
The horse did not try to run away or fight like the other horses. He had the signs of being a domesticated horse.
Their horse specialist believed it was Mongo.
They were right, it was Mongo.
They confirmed it when the local brand inspector found Mongo’s brand on his left shoulder.
They quickly got in touch with Shane and Shane drove four hours to pick up his best buddy.
Mongo has definitely changed physically.
He lost 400 lbs, for one thing, but Shane recognized him immediately when he saw the horse.
And the best part is that Mongo never forgot the things that Shane taught him.
Shane was ecstatic about their reunion.
He said that this was the first positive thing that has happened in his life in the past two years.
Shane can’t wait to introduce Mongo to his kids and feed him his favorite treat, Sour Patch Kids.
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