wild thang day

Wednesday April 29th was the beginnin of a what I hope to be a wonderful new friendship. This was the day that I finally got my hands on my lil mustang mare, 7 years after she was born on our farm. Oh, make no mistakes about it, she was not a happy camper. But, later in the day, she began to come around to the idea of us being friends. Well, sort of. Ya gotta understand that in those 7 years, she had gotten pretty used to doin things her way. So, in the beginning, she put up a good fight. she refused to hook up with me at all. She merely tolerated me being in the round pen with her and pretended to comply with my ques to change directions and whoa on cammand. Even after a few hours, she still refused to turn and face me when given the command to whoa. For those who dont know, whoa means to stop and just stand there. It took the longest time to be able to walk up to her and touch her without her moving away from me. And still another hour or two before I got a halter on her. But, she still refused to turn and face me. Eventually, when I would stop her and approach, she would pin her ears back and throw her head towards me, which is a sign of aggresion, I decided Right then that a change of tactics were in order. That's when my buddy got the lasso and roped her. Naturally she was pretty pissed off about it and threw a hissy fit, pulling and tugging, trying to get away. It didnt take long before she realised she wasn't getting free and began to settle back down. He started her moving around the round pen again and gave her the command to whoa and she ignored him, then another command to whoa. This time, when she ignored the command, he gave a sharp yank on the rope and spun her around to face him as she came to a stop a few feet in front of him. After repeating this tactic, only a few times, she started to come around to the concept of what she was supposed to do. This was a huge turning point in the rest of the day. From that point on, her resistance dropped dramatically and things began falling into place quite quickly. After a short time I could touch her any where even in her flanks and around her belly, which are very sensitive places on a horse, due to their prey animal instincts. I even picked up her front feet with no trouble, I even led my dad around on her back for a few minutes with total compliance. Before putting her back in her stall, to a nice reward of sweet feed and hay for the night, I led her to get a cool, refreshing, drink of water and just hung out with her for a while as she grazed leisurely on the fresh green grass in the barn lot. It was a perfect ending to a long day.