Stories that start with “Once upon a time” tend to have a happy ending. At least for the main character. So lets start with that and hope for the best. I originally started this blog as a way to track my progress with my project mare, but after many failed attempts at keeping up with it I have started over with a broader range to write about. I think that will really help with keeping this going and hopefully increase the number of people who want to read it.
So first a little background. I grew up on the coast in New England. I come for a good size family, whom all think I’m nuts, and moved hundreds of miles away to the horse capital of the world to work with the animals I love. Sure I could of stayed back home and worked with horses, but I was sick of the cold and there is just so many more opportunities down here.
When I first moved to Kentucky I was working as an intern for a race horse trainer. For those of you who don’t know what interning is; its working your butt off, from sun up to sun down and probably longer for no pay and still having to pay rent and buy your own food. You will be tired and sore, you will have splinters and bruises that you have no idea where they came from. If you are lucky you might get six hours of sleep a night. Why would you do this you might ask. Well, in exchange for all this you are learning what it takes to work in the industry. The early morning feeding, training, and the amount of care that these great horses need.
During this intern ship is when I met Sansa. The lady I was interning under and I were finishing up cleaning stalls at the track when she got a call about some “feral” horses that the human society had. They wanted her to come take a look at them and see if she would be able to tame them a bit. She asked if I wanted to go and we hopped in the truck. When we got to the farm I met Christian from the human society, she led us to a pasture where three mares, two grays and a bay, were grazing. She explained that these three were from a large seizure that had taken place earlier that year. They needed to be in a foster home for another month till the courts gave ownership to the human society. That’s where we came in. They wanted us to foster and train these three until it was time to find them homes.
Needless to say they were very timid and scared. It took us quiet a while to herd them into the trailer. None of them wanted to me touched. Thankfully the drive to my bosses farm was a short one and they were placed in a small paddock. That night we just let them rest and get used to the new place. The next day was when all the work would begin.
So on top of taking care of all my daily chores I now had three wild-ish mares to take care of. I wouldn’t call them completely feral, they must have had some training when they were younger but none of them seemed to trust people or want anything to do with them. I soon fell in love with the dark grey. Of the two grey horses she was the more timid and tried to hide behind the other horses. The light grey was the alpha of their little herd and wasn’t as scared as the others. We were able to catch her easily, with the help of grain, and put her in a separate pasture with two very well mannered mares. After that we herded the dark grey into a small pasture beside the one the bay was staying in. The old saying divide and conquer works great with horses.
I would say it took about three weeks to gain the dark grays trust. And even that was a touchy thing. She would let me scratch her face if I was feeding her grain but she really didn’t want me to touch her. So I thought up a trick. I started feeding her with a large halter in the hanging feed bucket. She didn’t like it but if she wanted the feed she had to put her nose in the halter. I did that for a few days and would keep rubbing her face while she ate. Finally I had the halter set up just right that when she started eating I was able to pull it up over her ears and get it to stay on her. Needless to say she bolted back like she had been bit. She was hesitant to come back to the feed bucket but I sat there and waited. She was haltered so that was one problem down.
I stood on the inside of the fence beside the feed bucket and waited. It took her about fifteen minuets or so to calm down and want to come back. I had a long lunge line in my hands and when she stuck her head back inside the feed bucket I clipped it onto her halter. Looking back this was not the smartest thing to do. But at the time I really wanted her caught so I could start working on her and after three weeks of getting to know this mare I knew she had had some training before. Well we had a repeat of the bolting when she heard the click of the lunge line. I let her drag the rope around the pasture for a few moments. It didn’t seem to really bother her so I slowly walked up and picked up the very end of it. This gave her plenty of space and allowed her to get used to me applying pressure with the rope without crowding her. Again so many things could go wrong with this. I don’t recommend anyone do this. We worked for about on hour on shortening the distance and her following me. That night she stayed in a stall.
We worked on leading and learning to lunge for a almost two weeks when she came available for adoption. Christian was coming out to take some pictures of them to put on their adoption website so I called her ahead of time and asked her to bring the papers for me to adopt the dark gray that I had named Sansa.
So that’s how I came to own a very moody thoroughbred project horse. She is doing great even though we have had a rough winter. We have worked on ground manners and she lunges like a dream now. We were not able to do to much training wise in the cold, even though I’m from way up north I moved to get away from the snow and cold. She now accepts a saddle on her back and we are working with putting a bit in her mouth. She is becoming more and more patient and understands when she has her rope halter on that its time to work and she must be on her best behavior. She is still very nervous about so many things, but that will change in time. I cant wait till we introduce the horrifying plastic bag on a stick and the “Tarp that eats bad ponies”.
