Jubal - The Mustang Nobody Wanted

This is a first post in hopefully a series of posts chronicling not just some of the training but the relationship progress with a human for Jubal who is a Mustang that I bought about 17 months ago that had been saved from a sales barn where he was purchased for slaughter.

I got a call from a local lady who works with the local courts and law enforcement to confiscate animals from neglect, abandonment or brutality cases and who is a leading area advocate for responsible animal ownership.

She asked me to take a look at this young Mustang she had saved, actual bought from a horse slaughter buyer. She was looking to find someone who could handle this Mustang and give him a good home. I was not looking for another horse but I agreed to look him over so I could tell other people about him.

What I learned was this Mustang came off one of the five or six Mustang herds in Oklahoma around three years ago now, but ended up in a shipping pen in North Texas enroute to the Sales Barn in El Paso where horses are purchased for the slaughter plants in Mexico to support the European horse meat demand. She bought him and had him shipped to a farm in Southern New Mexico where he was corraled for a year without handling - because he was too wild.

He was then sent to a local ranch for training, but they had to rope him to get halter on him and gave him some ground training in the round pen, but now needed to get rid of him as they were doing this for free and did not see any potential use in him, only headaches.

WHen I looked at him, I found a horse who was fearful, but I thought he had it in him to learn. I ended up buying him and thinking that he was either coming four or five, I would start over with him treating him like a two year old, put some ground training and a few rides on him, then wait for next year where I would treat him like a 3 year old and start his real training. That's where we are at now.

When I first brought him home, he was so fearful that he tried to jump out of his pen when I corrected him about being pushy on feed. He has also tried to jump out of the round pen a couple times as well. Let's see, he was reared up a couple times trying to paw me with his hooves and bite me in the stomach once and the arm twice. I didn't take offense as he was doing what he thought he needed to do at the time.

Over the past year, with a few rides in the round pen on him and constant handling on the ground, he was developed some trust in me that will make him accept a rider and become a brave horse. What makes him unusual to the Mustangs you see on the Mustang Makeovers, is the treatment he had to have received while in the shipping pens in North Texas and a few weeks in the sales pens in West Texas. That is where he undoubtedly learned that he was not going to get a fair deal form humans. That is what I must correct.