Double S Mustangs

In the summer of 2017, during a tour of a holding facility in Delta, Utah, my mother met a little roan filly that she fell in love with and wanted to adopt. However, this filly would not be available to adopt until weaned and processed, which would take a few more weeks. We would be able to pick her up at an adoption event being held at the facilities then.

To prepare for the adoption, we built some smaller corrals on our property; 20 feet long by 25 feet wide, a little larger than what is required by the BLM. I scavenged all the material for the corrals from scraps and unused buildings on our farm. I have become quite adroit at DIYing my own horse equipment needs. I used 8 foot railroad ties for post, wood poles that were laying around for fence poles, along with an old mining belt for fences.

I managed to only pay for the screws and nails used to put everything together (OK, may have also paid with immense frustration and a little blood too).

Just 3 days before the adoption event, I had the corals finished, my horse trailer readied, my truck packed up, and my application prepared. I was ready for this and brimming with excitement, “I might be getting my very first mustang” I kept telling myself. I had been waiting so long for this moment. So you can image how I felt when on the morning of the event, not even 15 miles into our trip, my truck began to break down. We turned around and headed home to pick up my parent’s car. I was pissed, to say the least, about driving to Delta with no truck or horse trailer to pick up horses…”why even go?” crossed my mind more than once. However, we were lucky enough to run into a friend and neighbor who happened to be at the event with his trailer, and he offered to take our horses home for us, benefits of living in a rural farming community. 

We found my mom’s beloved filly again, and she decided that this filly needed a buddy. So, when it was time for bidding my mom got the filly she wanted and a little buckskin colt. There was a adoption special; get one horse for $125 and get a buddy for $25, she got the pair for $150. When it was my turn to decide on the horse I wanted, I found myself going back to the mare pen from the Sulphur HMA, again and again. There were about 20 horses in that pen, but one lady kept drawing my eye. A grulla, with tiger-stripe markings on her legs, and a frosted mane. She was pushing around the herd, pinning her ears, and flaunting a sassy attitude.

Now, I am a goner for cheeky animals, especially horses. I don’t know what it is but an internal part of me must be calling out to  stubborn and difficult creatures, “show the world they don’t fit those labels” I always think to myself. I walked over to the office and told them her tag number #1164. They pulled up her sheet, we signed our paperwork for the 3 of them and I paid the $125 for my mare. While waiting for our turn and found myself a bit flummoxed at the sheet explaining her physical characteristics. It claimed she was a buckskin with a star on her face and no color on her legs, which was a far different stretch from my striped-leg grulla. I asked the staff about it but they said as long as the numbers matched it was fine, and they let me have her.

One of my favorite parts about getting new animals is finding a name that fits their personality. Most of the time when you adopt an animal from a rescues they already have a name, but with the mustangs you have a clean slate. My sister suggested that all of our mustangs have gun-themed names. Her idea stuck, mostly because I wanted to name my mare Remi (I feminized the name Rumi because I love his philosophy), short for Remington Steel, which covered her barn and show names. The roan filly was named Winchester Rose, Rose for short. Finally, the buckskin colt was named Ruger Rage, but is now fondly known as Ruger-roo.