This is Brandi. She’s a three-year-old mustang, unhandled, from the Sand Springs HMA in Oregon, USA. She belongs to some lovely clients who have five other mustangs they’ve already tamed/gentled (I dislike both of those terms, but don’t have a better one). Brandi arrived on Friday September 6th, and this video was taken four days later. My client had spent time with her over the last few days and had been able to go in and feed her and touch her. This is the second time I’ve met her, but the first time I’ve actually worked with her other than chucking food in a tub from outside the pen two days ago, when she wouldn’t take food from my hand.
We know we need to be able to reliably catch and halter her before she can be let out of the pen, and since she was doing so well, I thought I’d get that process started. This is about a minute and a half at the end of a longer session (over the course of about an hour, with several breaks and scratches), where she not only learned to put first her nose, then her whole head, then her neck in a loop, she decided to come to the loop from across the pen and “halter” herself as though she’d never *not* done it. There were a few previous steps, but otherwise almost no “formal” work.
This little mare is so different than I expected, and I feel so much relief and wonder in that surprise.
