The Beginning

Arrived home safely from Paul's Valley with my new charge on June 13,09. He travelled well, unloaded without incident and spent a quiet night . No name yet. Solid black.



Day 1 June 14.

Well we got off with a bang today. After a quiet night resting up- everything changed. After feeding our 8 other mustangs-they took off at a run. This new fellow decided he needed to go with them of course and took down 2 six feet gates on his way out. At this point he was free in our training arena- but not out in the fields- YET! By some miracle he ran into the round pen!! That was good-but not good enough as he thought he might try to escape that too. I was now forced into accomplishing in one day what we normally take quite a few days to do. I had to gentle this guy down-now. It took all day in the blazing heat with alot of help from my husband but we got it done. By end of day one he is allowing us to stroke him over most of body, pick up front feet, some elementary leading, lunging on the line with change of direction, whoa and yielding hindquarters. When we felt he was settled and safe, and repairs were complete-we led him back to his pen. No name yet.



Day 2 June 15

After trauma of yesterday we had quiet day just reinforcing lessons learned . We all needed a rest after the rough start. Spent alot of time brushing all over, leading around and generally just being together. Introduced tarp all over body, blankets, ropes all over. Minimal problems. He is very calm now and was released into small grazing area with his companion for the next 3 months- our invaluable pony horse named Fred who has helped us train our 8 other mustangs. This horse is worth his weight in gold as I train alone most days-he is my assistant. We have named this new mustang Sampson.