Mustang Sally at Bear Valley

My mustang adventure began when Doreen Henderson of the Wild Horses of Alberta Society told me about a wild mare that was at the Bear Valley Rescue Society in Bergen, Alberta. I went down to see Starburst, aka “Mustang Sally”. She was really wild and didn’t want people within 30 feet of her! But, I fell in love with her, and I adopted her right away. That was Valentine’s Day, 2007! 

 Two weeks later, Doreen and Bob Henderson, and Mike and Kathy Bartley who own and operate the rescue society, all helped me get Sally into a stock trailer and we hauled her to CR Stables, owned by Colin Donaghy. I put her in a box stall in the barn. After she settled down, I went into the stall. I took a kitchen chair, a dish of oats, and a paperback novel. I put the chair in the corner of the stall, closed the sliding door, sat in the chair, set the dish of oats beside my foot, and read my book. Sally knew what oats were because the rescue society had been putting grain in the trough in her corral. Even so, it took two hours before she finally came over to the oat dish. She was so cute! She had everything as far away from me as she could possibly keep it and still get her lip over the edge of the dish and into the oats. I would have laughed, except I was deathly afraid of startling her! I ignored her as best I could. I decided right then, that whether I could train her or not, I would look after her as long as we both lived. That was our first day together.

Over the next few months, I spent 2-3 hours everyday with Sally. I was the only one feeding and watering her, and cleaning out her stall. Pretty soon she would eat her oats with the dish sitting in my lap. Then, I switched to a bucket, so she had to stick her face down into the bucket, right between my hands. I would put her hay in the other front corner of the stall and sit on the floor in front of it, with my back against the wall, and read my book. She had to lean over me to get to the hay. By this point, she would often nibble my coat, pant leg, and boots. If she made it down my sleeve to where she could smell my hand, she would snort and move away. Kind of insulting!

Unfortunately, there was no way to get Sally from the barn to the round pen. I had to wait until things dried up outside and then load her into a trailer, drive over and let her out into the round pen. Once in there, I used a technique called “Join Up”, which was popularized by Monty Roberts. For details on this technique, I suggest that you read Monty’s book “The Man Who Listens To Horses”. Basically, Join Up involves using horse body language (Monty calls it “Equus”). You start by driving the horse away. Eventually, the horse will ask you to stop driving it away. When it does, you invite the horse to join up with you. Once the horse decides to join up with you, it is accepting you as the alpha and will follow you wherever you go.

Driving Sally Away

Robby asking Sally to join up

Sally joining up with Robby

(Three Photographs above by Rob Orgar)

It was truly a special moment when Sally joined up with me. I was standing in the middle of a 60 foot round pen and Sally could easily have been 30 feet away in any direction, but she chose to stand next to me. I told Sally that I knew she didn’t owe any human for being born, no one paid a stud fee for her, and that she had never asked to be part of the human world, but now that she was, the best thing would be if we could learn to work together. I moved around the pen, and wherever I would go, she would go with me. Once we were back in the stall, I knew we had made a major break through, because after eating hay for a while, Sally laid down right beside me! A definite sign of trust.

Once they have joined up with each other, horses groom each other with their teeth. In the stall, I used a Bamboo pole as an arm extension to lightly scratch Sally around the withers and down her back, without having to get too close to her. The ridges on the Bamboo pole are supposed to replicate the feel of a horses teeth. However, with Sally, it didn’t seem to do much good. She tolerated it, but her ears were back the whole time! She was clearly not enjoying the experience!!! Even so, Sally never once tried to bite or kick me, even when she was really scared.

One day, I arrived at the barn to find a strange man standing outside Sally’s stall looking in at her through the bars. Sally was standing right along the back wall of the stall, as far away from him as she could get. When this guy saw me, he asked, “Is this your crazy horse?” I replied, “She’s not crazy, she’s just wild.” “Same thing,” he grunted. “No,” I replied, “A wild horse just doesn’t know people and is not too sure they want to find out. A crazy horse is one that some ******* person has screwed up!” He promptly left and when I went into the stall, Sally seemed glad to see me.

After two months at the stable, as spring was approaching, friend’s of mine, Ron Mannerfeld and Brenda Dolphin, agreed to let me bring Sally out to their place near Sylvan Lake, Alberta, where she would have a large outdoor pen with access to a round pen. Ron helped me get Sally loaded for the trip, but by that point she was getting good at going into the trailer! 

Sally and I developed a new daily routine. I would drive out there everyday after work. When I got out of the truck, I would always holler, “Hello Sally girl!” She would whinny back and meet me at the fence. I would climb through the fence, give her a treat, and then walk slowly down to a small pen. Sally would follow me in there and I would close the gate before I gave her oats. I would sit on the manger and hold the bucket while she ate. Then, I would open the gate and walk out into the large pen. Sally would follow me wherever I went, with her head right beside my shoulder. She would stop when I stopped, walk when I walked, even back up when I backed up! We would play like that for a while, then we would go back to the small pen where I would give Sally her hay. I would usually sit with her for a while. When I left, she would follow me across the big pen and I would give her a treat, then climb through the fence and leave. About a month after the move, I was finally able to get Sally to eat oats from my hand.

On another occasion, I brought my nieces, Maria and Natalie, up from Calgary to meet Sally. They’re horse girls and are very involved in show jumping. After formal introductions, the girls helped me feed Sally. Then, we headed out into the big pen. I was walking along holding hands with Maria and Natalie, with one girl on each side of me, when there was a commotion behind us. I looked back to see Sally charging forward and stamping the ground with her forefeet! She was clearly agitated and was telling me, “Hey, I’m not number ******* four around here, I’m number two!” So, I made the girls sit over on the side, while I worked with Sally. That’s when I realized just how strong the bond between Sally and I had become. It was around this time that a friend asked me if I had “gentled that wild horse, yet”! I replied, “No, but I think I’ve ruined her for the wild!”

On the July long weekend, Sally finally decided to let me touch her. I had been workng with her everyday for 4 months! However, once she decided I could touch her, there were no boundaries. It took me a couple of days to figure that out, but then I was brushing her all over, even down her legs. When I was suddenly able to touch her all over, I wondered if the arm extension had been more effective than I realized at the time. 

A month after that, I finally got the halter on her. Because she was already following me all over, she was virtually halter broke as soon as she had the halter on. I started leading Sally out of the big pen to the hayfield, so she could graze. One day, when I was not being attentive enough, Sally stepped over the lead rope. When she raised her head, the rope came against the back of her foreleg and she freaked. She whirled, snatching the lead rope from my hand and took off at a full run with the lead rope whipping between her legs. She was in a panic and heading directly for the open gate out onto the Range road. In desperation, I hollered “Whoa, Sally girl!”, which, coincidentally, rhymes with “Hello, Sally girl.” To my amazement, Sally turned a 180 and ran straight back to me and stopped! She was facing me with the lead rope hanging down, so I gathered it up and we went back to grazing.

It wasn’t too long after that we had another wreck. Brenda’s son and his family came to visit. They had a Pit Bull and the dog got away and came charging down to the pen and went straight after Sally. Brenda’s dog was following behind the other dog, so as far as Sally was concerned, she was being attacked by two large dogs! They all went roaring down to the far end of the pen with me chasing pathetically behind. Sally looped around that end of the pen, and she and the dogs came flying back past me. I wanted to tackle the Pit Bull, but I was way too slow. They made a couple of laps around the pen before Brenda’s son got his dog under control. I stopped in the middle of the pen, out of breath, watching as the people and dogs retreated to the house. I was wondering how much damage had been done to my relationship with Sally, when she came up behind me and stopped. She was extremely alert, watching the people and dogs over my shoulder, and “whistling” through her nostrils. Somehow, though my efforts were pretty feeble, Sally perceived that I had defended her! 

From there, we started into normal ground work. One time, when I was working with Sally and saw just how smart she really was, I remember thinking, “Who’s training who here?” Then, I realized, that didn’t matter. What was important was that we were learning from each other and developing the ability to communicate. After another month, I was saddling her and ground driving her. I figured that I would be riding her pretty soon, but I was wrong! She just wasn’t comfortable with me trying to climb on and would shy away. 

I wanted to start riding Sally, but I didn’t want to push her into a fight, and I didn’t know how to proceed without causing one. When I was younger, I would just climb on and ride until the horse quit bucking. But, it’s been 20 years since I bounced worth a darn, and at any rate, the whole objective was to bring her from wild to mild, without confrontation!

That fall, I moved Sally to a stable owned by Calvin and Ruth Laveille. They have an indoor arena, where I could work with Sally over the winter. Her ground work was excellent, but we still weren’t getting any closer to riding, however we were still making progress in other ways.

Getting a wild horse to let you pick up it’s feet is the ultimate test of trust, because that is their means of flight. I started working on picking up Sally’s feet. After a while, I was cleaning them out with a hoof pick, and then I was finally able to trim her feet. Sally has amazing feet and legs. In the wild, a horse with bad feet or legs is wolf bait. It simply isn’t around long enough to reproduce, so those bad genes are expunged from the gene pool.

The next spring, Sally seemed to be getting a little sour from living in a small pen. I decided that she needed some freedom and time to just be a horse again, so I rented some pasture and turned Sally out with my mustang gelding Tomahawk. I didn’t even try to catch her for 3 months, although I visited them almost every day. I would call them and they would come in out of the pasture to the small corral for their treat. 

In August, I haltered Sally and went through our groundwork routine. I was expecting that she would need a review to get back to where she was, but she amazed me. She remembered everything and performed exactly as she had the last time we worked together, the previous April! I started working with Sally again, on a regular basis. I carried on with more sophisticated ground work and, with the help of some friends in Washington State, learned some good techniques that I hadn’t used before. I occasionally tried to get on Sally, but she continued to shy away.

 (Photo By Doreen Henderson)

I decided to approach getting on her in a different way. I took the saddle out of the equation, but neither of us felt comfortable with me jumping up to get on her bareback. So, I got a mounting stand, which allowed me to stand beside her, high enough to lean over her back and put weight on her, while petting her neck, ribs, and/or her rump. When she got really comfortable with that, I started doing it with her saddled. Eventually, when I was really confident that she would tolerate it, I stepped on and sat in the saddle. She didn’t buck or even move! It took almost 2 full years to get to that point, but we went from wild to riding without any confrontation. 

 (Photo by Doreen Henderson)

I’ve worked with horses since 1970, but I hadn’t had much to do with horses for about 15 years before I got Sally. I learned as much about horses in 2 years working with Sally, as I had learned in the first 20 years! Working with all those other horses was like getting a High School Diploma in horsemanship, but working with Sally was like getting a Master’s Degree! A wild horse is pure, unadulterated horse and requires a finesse far beyond what is required to work with a domestic horse.  

 Sally was very fortunate to have avoided the fate of most captured Alberta wild horses, the slaughter-house, but I am equally fortunate to have had her come into my life.  

Working with Sally has been extremely rewarding. She’s  just a really sweet horse and my best friend of another species. This year, I want to do some back country riding with Sally, and introduce her to cattle and ranch work. Hopefully, we will have many years together.

(Photo by Doreen Henderson)

Posted by Doreen on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 4:49 pm.