Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Muffin Man Moves with some help.

First touch with halter and lead on. Taylor is using M&M and her senior project for school.

First time lead with halter.

This handsome guy is a captive born Mustang. His mother is in our care as well. Both came from animal control. They talked about euthanizing them because they were dangerous. We took a look and our first thoughts were these are not dangerous horses, just terrified horses, even traumatized. So they could be saved, we agreed to take them both. They trembled as they stood in the stall were animal control had them held. It was easy to get them in the trailer because they moved as far away from us as they could. Just put your arms toward them and they jumped in. Once at the farm, it was the same getting them out. I had to get a stick to use an an extension of my arm. I put it in the open area at the front of the trailer and they moved away as fast as they could to the barn and jumped out.





Having the stallion, 'Stud Muffin' gelded was more of an ordeal than we anticipated. It took 5 different drugs and two hours to sedate him so he could be safely gelded. Mustangs have a great survival instinct. I guess you can say they can 'hold their liquor'. Any domestic horse lets the drug take over. Mustangs need to survive and fight an effects of sedation. After 3 hours of work, he was gelded. We changed the name to Muffin Man (M&M) and started to work with him in the round pen. We can get him to go around and around and around. It seemed to only get to that point and no further progress was being made. He would turn left, right and stop and look at you but no touching was allowed by M&M.



We had to be a little more assertive, though I don't like doing it, but I felt we were at a stand still. Bobby and I cornered M&M and carefully and slowly managed to get a halter on him. We left the lead rope on the halter so he can stop on it with his own foot and realize he had to stop at the pressure. He is in a small area and we watch carefully so he didn't panic and hurt himself. He did quite good.

Fifteen minutes a day spent training, learning to lead, learning to whoa, turning...just small steps to accomplish bigger things.

Muffin Man is available for adoption. He is about 7 years old. Surely not too old to learn to trust and love humans. If you are a kind, patient person, he may be your dream horse.Come and meet this handsome horse.







1 comment:

Unknown said...

If you can help me find a way to save a horse please read this. http://www.day-2-dayliving.com/2011/02/help.html
It's a beautiful thing you do!