Drug smugglers had abandoned her in a desert canyon near Arivaca, Ariz., a tiny town of some eight cattle ranches about 30 miles west of Nogales. Outlaws like this particular canyon because it's inhospitable to humans and to most land vehicles. It's not uncommon for Mexican smugglers to load up horses, ride them into the desert, then turn them loose to be met by drug merchants on the American side while they escape back to Mexico. Just the week before, Customs agents had found five abandoned horses and two mules, all riderless and dehydrated, carrying 1,335 pounds of marijuana. They seized the drugs, but the smugglers were never found.

Customs pilots John Cottrell and Mike Montgomery, from the Tucson Air Branch, happened to be flying a routine patrol in a Customs A-Star when they spotted the Arabian. Most likely, they thought, she was part of the group of abandoned horses and mules found the week earlier. They radioed the Border Patrol for help. Border Patrol Agent John Clarke and Customs Pilot Terry Jenner, also flying patrols in the area, heard Montgomery and Cottrell over the radio and responded.

They flew as close to the canyon as they could get and then walked down into it. They removed the mare's saddle; Jenner cut away her bridle and bit. Fashioning a new bridle from the saddle's straps, they walked her out of the canyon - her condition was much too severe for her to carry a rider. The helicopter overhead scouted the fastest route out while keeping contact with Jenner and Cottrell by satellite phone and a hand-held global-positioning receiver. All the while, the pilots wondered whether it would have been more humane to put her down on the spot.

Photo Credit: Border Patrol

Customs Pilot Terry Jenner and Border Patrol Agent John Clarke awaiting pickup of the injured mare, Dream Walker.

After calling for a trailer, they took her to a veterinarian in the nearby town of Rio Rico, where they'd taken the horses and mules rescued the week before. The vets at Rio Rico nursed her until she could be taken to the livestock auction at Marana Stockyards near Tucson.

Meanwhile, about the same time that "Red Foot" had been rescued - the pilots named her that because of her wound - Sylvia Sebring, a veterinary technician from a Tucson animal sanctuary, had been having a recurring dream about a light-colored horse (Red Foot was white) that walked with a limp and was corralled at the Marana Stockyard. The mare seemed to be asking for help.

A few days after her dream, a friend told Sebring about abandoned horses rescued by Customs and the Border Patrol: Could her animal sanctuary take them in? Sebring made some calls and discovered that the horses were to be auctioned a few weeks later - at the Marana Stockyards. She went to the auction and bid till she got her. She named her "Dream Walker."

Today, Dream Walker lives at the animal sanctuary. Her recovery has been remarkable; she's being rehabilitated so she can go on the trail rides that Sebring and her nine-year-old daughter so enjoy.

"I love her to death," says Sebring. "She came with an attitude [because of the dreadful circumstances she had come from], but it's being gently adjusted. The folks at the sanctuary are exceedingly kind to her, and she's coming around through gentle persuasion."

And the pilots who saved Dream Walker? "We're animal fans," says Jenner. "And we like stories with a happy ending."