Here’s Fiadh (pronounced Fee Ah, not like the car), 2yo Twin Peaks CA Mustang filly, confronting our curtain about its audacity to blow in her face on a particularly windy afternoon. Then she walked over to me like “Did you see that???” She’d never ‘met’ the curtain before.
I adore this filly. Not just because she looks like Lacy with a mule mane, but because this girl is a war horse in the making. She takes NO crap. Not from me, not from the curtain, not from anything. And she loves the dogs.
I tend to tell people when it comes to picking a horse “Watch their immediate reaction to something that upsets them and see if you like that.” In my experience it takes a second or two for learned behavior to (hopefully) kick in.
If you can more or less comfortably sit or deal with whatever the horse does right after she gets caught off guard, you can probably get along with her, assuming you get along with her in general.
That’s a little bit like human relationships. It’s the hard moments that make or break those too, assuming those involved enjoy each other on the good days.
I like dogs but I’m a bit of a closet crazy cat lady. I think that’s why I’m drawn to cat-like traits in Mustangs too.
Some sass, lots of opinions, a bit of mischief paired with that look of arrogance and “you realize I don’t HAVE TO do what you want, right!?”. That’s my kind of horse. The more dog-like ever-friendly pocket crawler type not so much. To each their own.
I’ve had several people gently encourage me to keep some horses that aren’t exactly my type because those would one day make nice riding horses someone else would enjoy. I’m trying.
Personally, I appreciate a horse that talks back a bit and makes me work for it. This filly does. At the holding facility she would look miffed and walk away when approached. She shows exactly how she feels and we’ve had a number of conversations about what appropriate ways to express one’s opinion look like.
She needs to be able to do that. Still, she needs to not rear or plow people over. She also needs to learn a certain level of frustration tolerance and develop the ability to think through challenges and respond to cues rather than react.
That’s part of the joy and responsibility of working with Mustangs: To help them learn, enter into two-way communication with us, and yes, in a way override their instincts and develop new ways of interacting with their environment because most of what humans ask of them goes against what any self-respecting wild horse would do. No easy feat at all. I have a lot of respect for how resilient and capable of adapting many of them are.
If you’re interested in learning more about Mustang gentling or in adopting a gentled wildie through Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy , send me an email or a PM.
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