Mustang Camp, the non-profit entity, has been on hold for a while. We estimated that we would be able to fund it with proceeds from the adoption contract, but despite having gotten 20+ horses adopted, we have yet to see any money. This highlights one of the problems with trying to do service contracts for the federal government: their hands are tied to a crazy system and you have to adapt to it. Right now we are glad that we have the flexibility of personal ownership of the business.

Fortunately the employees we intended to take on, never arrived to start their jobs. We would be very stressed if we had to find money for paychecks. We have had volunteers for most of the spring.

We have taken two privately owned horses in for ground schooling. Wilbur (a PMU survivor), and Max (an unhandled mustang languishing in an adopters corral). We are charging $350 per month for ground school services. We don’t have the personnel to ride them but we get them ready for riding by all the basics, driving, saddling, mounting, etc. The main thing is that we are getting them to have an interest in working with the primates. We would like to team up with another trainer who can do the saddle training.

During the last week of March, we had the first wild horses of 2011 arrive. We are naming the bands alphabetically… the band stallions names set the theme. So this was the A band, the stallion was named Austin and the theme is Texas towns. His son is Tyler, his mares: Odessa, Marfa, and Dallas. Or.. Dallas Alice. I may try to stay with town names.

There is a batchelor band in the USFS pens and they should be named B names (Benson and Bisbee?). Since they aren’t my horses, it’s not up to me.

I finally got a laser jet printer and chapters of the Mustang Camp Manual are starting to emerge from cyberspace.