This weekend many people celebrated spooky things.
Hence our highlighting Topaz, an enormous 4yo dun Stewart Creek WY Mustang gelding and the kindest wimp we’ve met yet.
This horse – we last measured him at 16hh, it’s time to measure again to see if he’s approaching the 16.1hh he string tested to – has been with us for a little over a year.
A year. This big boy eats a small bale of hay A DAY. He’s basically worth his weight in gold by now. If only horse math worked like that.
Why would we hang onto a Mustang for that long? Because he’s trying SO HARD to be friendly and brave.
Tay Martin calls him my “passion project”. Anytime she’d give me a heads up on how many months Topaz has been at Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy , eating two normal horses’ worth of hay, I’d respond with “give it some more time, I really think he’ll come around”.
It’s beginning to look as though that’s true. Catching is easy now. Leading, lungeing and sending look like I’m working a horse rather than flying a kite. He loads and most importantly, he’s getting confident about feet handling.
Everything was hard for Topaz at first, but his fear of having his feet held, likely due to him struggling to balance on 3 legs was the biggest hurdle we needed to overcome.
Really big and very flighty was a hard combination. I managed ok with reactive, accident prone Spur. This guy was on another level. Mark Lyon spent 3 days with us earlier this year and helped me help Topaz finally connect the dots.
At this point he’s cautious but willing with most things, loves to be groomed and is quicker to calm down when he does get nervous. He respects rope pressure and 5ft panels.
Topaz is scheduled for his first real, full trim this month. Assuming he does well for our farrier, we’re going to start the search for his person.
Being as big and reluctant as he is, it’s going to take much more than just love and the desire to own a tall Mustang “with color” to do right by him.
Topaz is trainable and has the ability to be a very good boy in the right hands. We’ll be careful and patient in finding him a suitable, long-term home.
In the meantime, if you would like to support our Colorado-based 501c3 nonprofit organization and contribute to Topaz’ outrageous feed bill, you’ll find don@tion information in comments.
Thank you for helping us help wild horses, even when it takes them a little (or a lot) longer to learn their way around people.
