Wyoming’s Favorite (Disabled) Son

In September 1993, Henry Poling was doing what most 25-year-old Wyoming cowboys do — loading yearling cattle in Garrett, a remote part of the state. By his recollection, this group of cattle were ill-tempered from the start so by the time he was loading the last steer onto the truck, he was glad to be done. He had no idea it would be the last day he would spend as an able-bodied man.

That day, he remembers, the person he was working with was slow in dropping the gate and one of the ‘wild’ steers started to come back out. Although he pulled himself up to let the steer go under him, it still caught him in the midsection and folded Poling over its head. As the steer charged back down the ramp, it slammed Poling against a gate, shattering his vertebrae and permanently damaging his spinal cord.

While he lay on the ground, unmoving and perhaps on some level knowing that his life was going to look quite different than he had originally envisioned, he wondered if there was a future for a crippled cowboy. He had no idea how prescient that thought would be.

So it was, the morning after his operation and anxious to get back home, Poling asked the surgeons what he needed to do to get out of the hospital. Their answer? He had to be able to live independently. It was then that he began the arduous task of rehab. What would take most people with his injuries a month or more, he did in 25 days — which according to therapists and doctors — was nothing short of miraculous.

“I had work to do and I wasn’t willing to give it [ranching] up,” Poling said.

He became a paraplegic that day and has spent the last 31 years running his ranch from a wheelchair.

Pain Is a Good Teacher

Once he was released from the hospital, and for six months after, when he wasn’t in physical therapy, he recalls spending much of that time lying on a couch watching TV and contemplating his future.

“I was...bored and I thought, ‘You’re lying around here waiting to die, and you have a lot of time for that to happen, so you should probably get going,’” Poling recounted. Within eight months of his surgery, he was mounting his horse with help, and within 10 months of leaving the hospital, he was putting up hay.

“The cattle needed me,” Poling said. “Those cattle gave me a reason to get up every morning.”

While he doesn’t mind talking about his accident, he prefers to look forward and lean on what he has learned and what this experience has taught and continues to teach him.

“As I tell everyone, I really do not see much interesting in what I do,” Poling said. “After my accident, I continued to ranch for two reasons, first and foremost because it is the only thing I ever really wanted to do in life, from the time I was very small and secondly it was the only thing I know how to do to make a living, and poverty is a great motivator.”

He credits much of his independence to the friends and family who helped him after he got out of the hospital.

“They didn’t treat me as handicapped and insisted that I go about my daily life as much as possible. I think this, along with my own desire, helped me to adjust to my life in a chair and devise my plan to continue on the path I had chosen in life.”

What that meant for Poling was to find a place to homestead so he could begin to ranch from a wheelchair.

In 1998, he decided to take the modest settlement he had been given and buy 1,200 acres (small in comparison to other ranches, by his estimation) that included a trailer, where he now keeps around 120 Angus-based mother cows and their calves until they’re yearlings, pigs, horses and dogs. In 2008, after more than 10 years in a trailer, Poling built a new 1,680 square foot home acting as general contractor and making it much more disabled-friendly, and has aptly christened it Henry’s Hilton. Over time, he has also built corrals, a calving shed, a storage shed, a chicken coop, a milking barn and a greenhouse where, for several years, he ran an aquaponics system to raise tilapia and grow fresh vegetables and berries year round that he would then sell at a local Farmer’s Market.

“It was a trial every single day ...but [now] it’s nice,” Poling said.

Since that day in 1993, Poling has had a lot of time to reflect and he believes that while most things may have been done right, many things weren’t.

Disposition Is a Huge Factor in Cattle

According to Poling, disposition is a heritable trait and can influence the entire behavior of a herd of cattle over time. It is, he said, the one factor that changes the game and is the wild card you can try and plan for but can’t necessarily always beat.

“In a closed herd, one that is from a raised group of cattle and not added to from purchased cattle other than bulls, it is much easier to control disposition issues through culling out animals with a hotter temperament and making sure their offspring aren’t retained,” he said.

Alternatively, a cowherd that regularly has new introductions of cattle purchased either privately or through a public sale can often present a much tougher challenge in handling disposition.

“You can run into anything from cows that hate their calves, to cows that hate their people when they calve and even cows that seem to always hate everyone,” Poling said. “Having had all those cases at one time or another it does pose a problem.”

The biggest factor, he continued, in culling them right away is the financial investment you’ve made and how to get a return while simultaneously easing your loss.

“These usually become cases where you have to watch closely when handling these cattle until the time that you feel you can deal with them by culling.”

Moving Forward and Lessons Learned

If it isn’t apparent, Poling remains fiercely independent, while asking for help when he needs it. More than that, spending his life around livestock has taught him many things, chief among them, patience and compassion – especially, he said – as he gets older.

“Having a gentle cow take you out to her calf that is in need of help and somehow, she knows you are able to assist her, is a humbling thing. Struggling to save a calf dehydrated from severe diarrhea, knowing that every few hours you have to get electrolytes down him or he will be gone, is more than just a financial consideration. It’s saving a life that would not make it without the assistance from a person.”

Like his counterparts, Poling has struggled through droughts, low cattle prices, grasshoppers and “everything else that my fellow cattlemen and women have faced.”

“I have also been able to enjoy the freedom of being my own boss, [had] the pleasure of working with some great individuals in the industry, I have had successes and failures. Much of my journey has involved figuring out how to adjust things around the ranch and often teaching myself how to do things from a chair that I did standing up for the first 25 years of my life,” Poling said.

These days, Poling finds himself just sitting and watching his cattle eat after he has put the hay out, enjoying the sound of cows chewing, watching them forage for the choicest grasses or clovers.

“[There are] no concerns of the world of humans, of taxes, political wars, bills or even concerns of where their hay for tomorrow is coming from,” Poling said. “They trust that it will be there.”

For Poling, he has (and continues) to learn much from the livestock he keeps.

“I have learned the lesson of moving on, even when tragic things happen,” Poling said. “I have watched a cow stay by her calf for a few days after it has died, obviously saddened by the loss, but I see how they eventually go back to the herd, reintegrate and go on living.”

“This has,” Poling said, “been one of the best lessons for me in dealing with life in a chair. Mourn for a bit, because the loss deserves it, then move on and make the most of the rest of your life.”