Fishing for Mustangs

He was a proud young Mustang till he came here, now look at him, he's as crazy as the rest of us!



As you can see Echo managed to get his halter off. Now I will sleep better at night. I have NEVER left a horse alone with a halter on till I adopted a Mustang, so I'm glad he pulled it off. It was too big anyway for his little head. I just sent it down to the Burns Corrals thinking he wore a regular horse size halter.

He was responding very well to the halter and rope when I asked him to move forward with no silly stuff on his part. I do not have a corral the right size to work a horse, they either too big or too small, so I have to be able to touch him before he goes into the bigger corral. We have been doing some bonding from the comfort of my lawn chair. I let him rub his top lip all over my face, I had a wonderful close up view of his grubby little colt teeth. He rubbed my face a bit sore. I trusted him not to pull my hair and he didn't. Then he trusted me enough to let me rub my nose on his nose. (I wish he'd blow his nose more often). I even got to touch his nose with my fingers and tickle his whiskers. We have also been blowing into each others noses.

After I've leave him alone for awhile he's nervous when I walk towards his pen again and steps back. Wildairo wasn't the least afraid of the bamboo pole but Echo is fearful of it. I need to get him to enjoy being touched with it but he steps back out of reach. I came up with a unique way of getting him to except the pole being waved about, I call it Mustang fishing. I put stalks of hay in the hollow end of the bamboo pole and then I wave it about, he follows the pole around. I make a 'click' sound when he looks at it and as a reward I let him eat the bait.





This evening, when it cooled down a bit, I went into Echo's pen to clean out his water tub. He was so scared and stood in the corner facing me. (Oh, he is so pretty). I held out a handful of hay then turned, walked away and faced the corner. Then I walked to him again held the hay out for a moment then walked back to the corner. After about the fifth time I turned around he walked up to me and took the hay from my hand. I can touch the bamboo pole on the side of his face and stroke him but he jumped back when I touched his shoulder.

The farrier cannot come back to trim Wildairo's feet till the 25th. I'm concerned because his feet are very long now. I'm cutting back on his feed because he's getting a bit too big in the belly area. I hope he's not pregnant like Bazzy Boy, the Australian lazy sod gelding/stallion, is claiming to be. (See my 'Blogs I enjoy' for Bazz's ramblings).