.38 Caliber
My first TIP mustang
Late 2017, I submitted an application to Mustang Heritage Foundation to become a TIP trainer. TIP (trainer incentive program) was created to bridge the gap between potential adopters and the BLM off-range facilities. Approved trainers have 3 months to use natural horsemanship methods to gentle mustangs to meet a set of requirements; the horse is halter broke, can pick up all four feet, load and unload in a trailer, and the trainer needs to find an adopter for the mustang. Mustangs trained through the TIP program are available for the $125 adoption fee. The program helps potential adopters who might not have the skills or time to completely start a wild horse from scratch. My application was approved for the 2018 season and I was eligible to train up 2 horses at a time.
During the first week of January 2018, I drove a short distance to the Delta holding facility. My mom wanted tag along for the trip and have a look at the horses available for adoption. We wandered up and down the alley for about a hour. I wanted to train a horse that had been in the facility for over a year, a mare, and 8 years or older. This is a less then ideal combination in most people’s minds. Sadly, there was a very large selection of horses that met my requirements. Eventually, I settled on a brown 9 year old mare from the Cedar Mountain HMA, who had been at the facility for over a year. She, at one point during our tour, had come up to the fence and almost let my mom touch her.
At 14.2 hands tall, she had two extra freeze brands, one upside down 5 on her left shoulder, the other a FB on her left hip. Both signify that she took part in a BLM birth control round up and release, twice. She was given PZP (porcine zona pellucida) an immuno-contraceptive agent that (theoretically) blocks conception 90 percent of the time. More than her history, she had a special look in her eyes, something that said she had so much to offer. I signed the paperwork to foster her, loaded her up, and headed home.
I like to let the new horses have a day to settle into their new surroundings before I open the communication channels, but I also want them to adjust to being closer to humans than what they were previously accustomed to. I usually unload them and go park the truck then come back with some hay and stand outside the fence for awhile. This way they can see me while they are eating, and I can get a idea of how reactive they are. Miss Cali, (sticking to the gun-name theme) had no problem coming up to the feed bucket next to me. I even got her to take a handful out of my hand.
I left her tag on, since I wanted to take it off when she was OK with being touched, but I had the BLM put a halter on her.
The next day, I went out to work with her, in the small square pen where I let her move around until she was comfortable with me in the space. She spent some time wandering around to different corners, looking at the ground, talking to the horses in the corral next door and staring at the sky. I never focused directly on her, keeping my body angled away anytime I moved around. When I did directly face her, I got her feet moving until she found her “sweet spot” or the corner she preferred to stop in. It was becoming painfully obvious that she was showing what I consider dissociative behavior. I could approach her and she would stand, but instead of turning to look at me with one or both eyes, she would look the other direction, completely ignoring me. I would approach, 8-10 feet away and face on and she would repeat the same behavior. She never showed any signs of aggression during our first session but I could never get her to engage with me. Not once during the hour I spent trying to open a dialogue did I feel like she was “with me”. I put her back in her corral and walked away feeling more than a bit dissatisfied with myself. How could I get her to open a conversation with me? This is something I would ask myself many times over the course of my work with Cali.
