Year 2020
We were not planning on getting two….
If you read yesterday’s Mustang story then you already know we adopted a Mustang on the BLM Online Wild Horse Corral. At the beginning of the auction I was drawn to a big 8yr old Chestnut mare (I know there are a lot of red flags here …age…color…mare..but I was only 15yrs old and didn’t know any better
). We were quickly outbid and we moved on to other horses. But a few days later we were contacted saying that the “winner” of the chestnut mare had “passed” (I didn’t know this was possible on an auction) and we had the new WINNING bid. This sent us all into a head spin…could we adopt a second Mustang?!? We desperately tried to think things through using sound judgement but our horse crazy brain overpowered any rational thoughts and we decided that “Of course we would adopt her”!
We brought her home and I was so excited to begin training her! She was everything I wanted! Big, stocky and and had the most beautiful blonde mane
It was love at first sight…or so I thought. It wasn’t long before I started to realize my mistake of adopting an older chestnut mare. She was sassy and was NOT interested in being domesticated. She also HATED other horses and bent several of my panels kicking at others.
She also wasn’t too keen on the idea of anyone touching her..For 2 weeks I desperately struggled to touch her with no success. After trying everything my sister and I could think of, we were out of ideas… So in a last attempt we decided to try and rope her. We had never roped anything in our entire life so the likely hood of us actually being able to get it around her neck was 1 in 100… We should have known better. By some crazy chance we caught her on the VERY FIRST throw. We were in complete shock and immediately let go of the rope. With all the loose slack the Mustang got both front legs through the lariat and it cinched around her middle…stuck. We started to panic! The rope was old and it took us two entire hours to finally wiggle the rope loose enough for her to get it off from around her middle. Praise God she walked away without any rope burns and we decided roping her was NOT the best strategy…
Eventually, after many long days I was finally able to touch her for the first time. Progress was slow and I made a lot of mistakes but over the course of the next 2yrs she adjusted to domestic life and I even got her going under-saddle. She slowly turned into a solid citizen and started to enjoy time with humans…even sneaking over for scratches and treats. She now lives with a friend of ours and is loving her life and is now almost TOO friendly as she will push on the fence to get just one more scratch
I will always be thankful to this beautiful mare for all the lessons she taught me. I can honestly say training this mare was one of the key milestones to my later successes with Mustangs. Whenever I get frustrated, I try to remember that tough horses make better horsemen.
Steffen Stampede 