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Nomination to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board

Nomination to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board

Facebook message from the BLM

Here’s your opportunity to get involved! BLM is seeking nominations to fill three positions on the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board. The three open positions represent the areas of natural resource management, public interest (with special knowledge of equine behavior) and wild horse and burro research. The Board plays a vital role in advising the BLM and U.S. Forest Service on the protection and management of wild horses and burros on public lands. Nominations are due within 45 days of this announcement. Visit blm.gov/whb for details about completing and submitting a nomination packet, or contact Dorothea Boothe at dboothe@blm.gov.

FEDERAL REGISTER NOTICE Deadline is 2 November 2020

My Response

Hmmm….

Well, here is my CV if you would like to nominate me.

I have done this before and it turns out that it doesn’t matter how many regular people nominate you. It matters if your congress person nominates you. Important people with influence. Maybe you are that person?

Nominate me for the Wild Horse and Burro Research position. Thanks.

Task 39: Neck-Rein to Move Front Legs

Task 39: Neck-Rein to Move Front Legs

Install this power steering unit from the start. The front legs move laterally in response to a neck rein cue. This is how we turn the horse while walking forward.

For details of this training task and many more, go to www.MagicMustangTamer.com where we show you effective training techniques most people can succeed with.

Like and share our blogs and videos to help reach more overwhelmed mustang adopters that are feeling kinda stuck.

Basic Taming Help

FeaturedBasic Taming Help

We have been posting clips from our saddle training protocol and I have gotten quite a few inquiries about more fundamental first training. We have it, and it’s already available. Right now. Your animal can be tamed.

Essentials on MustangCamp.org

Our non-profit organization website has a few resource-rich pages on it’s website. Start with this one: https://www.mustangcamp.org/how-to-train-a-wild-horse-or-burro Be sure to download the PDF list of Taming Tasks.

Get Serious on the MagicMustangTamer

Thoroughly Explore the MagicMustangTamer.com. Some of the pages are behind the paywall, but I was careful to leave plenty of good info in the public areas. If you are serious about learning and simply can’t afford the membership fee, write me a letter (patricia @ mustangcamp.org).

Subscribe on YouTube

Most of our videos are unlisted and you need the link to see them, but we have been putting videos up for about a decade so there are lots of public ones.

The Barriers to Success

The animal may already be conditioned in such a way that the tasks of taming will be harder. They won’t be impossible, but definitely harder. Take it into consideration, adjust your timetable to progress at a microscopic scale, molecule by molecule. Train in short 3 minute sessions with a written down goal. Don’t give up. Write or call for help. My goal is to help people help animals so I won’t mind at all.

Task 33: Walk-On Circling the Hoppers

Task 33: Walk-On Circling the Hoppers

In this task, the animal learns to go forward without the trainer in leading position and to start walking in response to the verbal cue “Walk-On”. This could more easily be taught with negative reinforcement, but we choose to use least-coercive methods.

For more information, another video, and a discussion of this technique, please visit our other website: www.MagicMustangTamer.com

Task 32: Target the Cones

Task 32: Target the Cones

Seriously, your horse could suddenly become very fond of highway construction zones after this training. Keep that in mind.

The ultimate goal of Task 32 is to extend our ability to give the horse information and get them moving away from us on cue. We teach the horse to be “sent” places, leaving leading position, and walking in front of the human. The horse must take the cue and move away from us to reach the goal.

This is what it looks like with a horse on lead.

For more information on our least-coercive methods, visit out page at the MagicMustangTamer.com where we have a more detailed post about Task 32.

Covid-19 Pandemic

Covid-19 Pandemic

Social distancing comes naturally to us in Largo Canyon. The closest other people are at least a mile away. Nothing is really different except that we have made sure that we have plenty of beans and rice on hand to outlast this thing. Except for the crazy news, life is pretty normal at Mustang Camp.

It might be hard to get animals adopted until this thing blows over. Certainly we don’t want to be hauling animals around. However, people are adopting dogs while they are staying home, so maybe it’s different than it seems. Heck, everything is different than it seems!
Glad that horses don’t get these corona cooties!

Hay there!

We buy 1800 lb bales of grass hay for the horses. During it’s stay in our program, each horse consumes about 1 bale and a bale costs $280 delivered and stacked. We just took in a dozen mustangs to tame. It’s time to start collecting some coin towards the next hay purchase. Can you spare a little to help us help the horses?

Donate

With Every Opportunity, Comes a Liability.

An old house for sale in Tucumcari showed up in my FaceBook news feed. Priced at only $1250, I had to look. 709 E. Main Street, is a dilapidated combination of old gabled roof and flat roofed eatery. The roof is caving in and the whole thing needs to be bull-dozed. But $1250 for a lot in town?

It made me think about our original plan to move to Tucumcari, which we still believe is a better horse adoption market than Milan, NM. We had a lot to learn about living in zoned areas. It would not have gone well. The land on the edge of town where we wanted to build Mustang Camp is zoned wrong (Industrial). This little property on Main street is zoned Commercial, so you couldn’t even fix it up and live there. Yes, we learned about zoning. Thank you, Village of Milan.

We also learned that we only have so much band-width. Even if this place only cost $12, we could not deal with it. That kind of thinking doesn’t come naturally to us.

Magic Mustang Tamer

A Magical Tool to Train Wild Horses

As a professional wild horse taming operation, we’ve had trouble recruiting qualified staff, training staff, and offering training opportunities to students. We think we have solved the problem somewhat by separating the academic training mission of Mustang Camp into it’s own project with it’s own website, the Magic Mustang Tamer featuring two major components: 1) an online classroom with comprehensive programs for basic wild horse care, animal training, and exploration of controversial world of the mustang; and 2) a library of our protocols, described and detailed for even the most avid trainers, and illustrated with more than 100 video clips.

Mustang Camp interns and students will be required to complete the first two educational programs before they come to camp. This is anticipated to filter out all but the most dedicated students. So if you were considering coming for an internship, start on the classes. The first module (Safety) is free and most of the rest cost $10 per module. Most modules will take about 3 hours to finish, there is a Learn by Doing assignment for every module, and learning is assessed with a quiz. It is the only program of it’s type and topic.

Access to the library of protocols requires a supporting membership, which costs $100 per year. It includes personal consultation and invitation to a weekly teleconference to discuss training. The income generated will be used to develop more content… I have my eye on a Go-Pro and tracking tri-pod.