Friday, April 15, 2011

Horses: Mustang Dancer - Part One

We have a Mustang horse that my wife named Dancer.

About 3 years ago, I was at a gas station when a lady at another pump noticed my load of hay and asked if I had horses.

We talked for a few minutes and she asked if I would be interested in a Mustang for free. After talking it over with my wife, I call and agreed to take a look at the horse.

When my wife and I arrived to see the horse, we found a fairly wild Mustang mare towing around a lead rope that was in shreds.

It seems the first owner adopted the mare through the BLM Adaption Program and housed her in a pen for a year. He bred her out once, but he never removed her rope alter or her very long cotton lead rope.

I figured it was probably a cotton lunge line.

After the first owner got his foal off of her, and of course the one year required ownership year was over, he sold her to the lady that I'd met at the gas station.

The lady is actually a very nice gal who works at the local Credit Union in Jackson, but like a lot of folks who adopt Mustangs she really didn't understand what she was in for. So like some first owners, she kept the rope bridle and shredded lead rope on the mare. I think the mare was too much to handle.

Like the first owner, she bred her out once to a very good looking Paint.  I didn't see the first foal, but the second foal was absolutely beautiful.

After I said we'd take her, I found out something else. The mare had never been physically touched my either owner since she was first gotten from the BLM.

Since all I have is an old Miley two horse trailer, a friend of her's lent us her stock trailer. After finding out how spooked the mare was, we decided to park the trailer at the end of the stable's breezeway. Then we covered the other end with her other friends.

Her husband waited by the trailer while I went into the 16 by 12 foot stall to see if I could get hold of the rope. When she nearly jumped the rails, I backed off and moved to Plan B.

Plan B was to open her stall gate and let her into the breezeway and herd her into the stock trailer. When we opened her stall gate, she freaked. She had never been through the gate and now she was in foreign territory.
But once she was in the breezeway, she made a made dash away from the people at the end of the barn.

She ran right into the trailer before realizing that she screwed up. We quickly shut the trailer doors and let he fume for a while. Plan B worked, but once we got her in there - well she really threw a fit!

In fact, she through a fit all the way to our home for about 35 miles.

When we got her here to our place, I had been thinking how to get her into a pen. I decided to make things a little easier on unloading her and getting her into a pen by bringing the pen to her.  So I asked the driver of the trailer to pull into my pasture in the front of my property.

After we found a spot, I then moved my corral panels of my round pen over to the rear of the trailer encircling the trailer's doors.

When we opened it, she came flying out!


Story by Tom Correa

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