See you later, Mustang Camp

It's been 3 days since I left Mustang Camp. Leaving was just as much of an adventure as the summer I spent there. Thank you, New Mexico, for giving me a new definition of "desert"...

As promised, this post is intended to bring this blog to a close. I thought for a couple of days how exactly I wanted to do that, and I think the most valuable thing for me to do is a sort of "Day In The Life of a Mustang Camp-er" Hopefully this gives potential volunteers/interns an idea of what they are getting themselves in to - and encourage them to hurry up and get themselves over there!

The following is an average day for an intern at Mustang Camp during the Summer of 2013:

Morning Chores
6:30 AM - Wake up (OK more realistically closer to 6:50...)
7:00 AM - Meet in the dining room for tea/coffee and pastries or cinnamon toast
7:30 AM to somewhere between 9:00 and 10:30 AM - Feed the horses breakfast and muck the pens
After feeding/mucking - John makes breakfast while others tend to the garden/greenhouse
Around 10:30 to 11:30 AM - Breakfast! (Usually something delicious like pancakes, oatmeal, breakfast burritos, etc.)

Class Time
After breakfast until around noon, depending on what there is to discuss! - Pat and the interns meet in the classroom to talk about vocabulary, training techniques, etc. This is also the time where any training "issues" are addressed and we work together as a group to come up with potential solutions

Training Time
ALL AFTERNOON - Hands on training time with the horses. I know of a lot of internships/volunteer experiences with animals where they say "Sorry, we can't let you come in physical contact with the animals since you're not covered under our insurance." Luckily, at Mustang Camp, animal training and behavior modification is seen in a different light - working with animals is a technical skill that needs PRACTICE. Sure you can read all the books and watch all the clinician videos you can get your hands on, but in no way does that mean that you can apply these techniques in real life on a real animal. There is no lack of opportunity to enhance your timing, learn to adjust your body language, and experiment with body position and treat delivery positioning and reinforcement schedule. After working primarily with dogs, I noticed a couple of interesting things with working with the mustangs:

1. Mustangs don't move NEARLY as quickly or move quite as many parts of their body at the same time as dogs. One of the first things the mustangs at Mustang Camp learn is the "Easy" posture, where they stand still with their head low and neck straight. I can only imagine trying to teach wiggly Benji something like that - you'd have to teach your dog a very solid stand-stay first!
2. Compared to shaping behaviors in dogs, the mustangs seem to be rather forgiving in the precision of timing required for them to understand the desired behavior. If you are half-a-second late on your bridge, or accidentally miss bridging the behavior once, all is not lost. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the mustangs overall move more slowly, or it could also have to do with their seemingly higher self-awareness. In comparison to dogs, the horses seem to have a better sense of what they are doing, when they are doing it, and most of the moves they make (behaviors they offer) are performed at what I would consider a higher level of consciousness than when I am dealing with my dogs. Although I must say, there is so much individual variation in the horses as well in how much attention they are paying to their actions. Take, for example, Ginger and Greta. Ginger was very much a "Let me throw everything at you and if something works, feed me!" while Greta really worked for things to be predictable: "If you say 'shoulder' and touch my withers instead, shame on you!" Both, however, were very keen on picking out what I was bridging them for - though, perhaps for very different reasons.
3. It's easy to tell when a horse likes scratching and when you can use it to reward good behavior, since you can tell exactly when they are enjoying the scratches. Plus, you don't have to scratch them for very long. While dogs will lean into your hand when you find a good itchy spot (but you'd better give it a good scratch!!), horses will stick out their lip and arch their necks when you've found a good spot. Relaxing for a rub is also a great way to tell that the horse is comfortable with whatever you're doing with them that day. I got to do some fun experimenting with Mr. Simon, who was incredibly food motivated, but also liked a good scratching. If I had food, there was no way he was going to work for scratches, but if there was no food in sight, he was happy to try his very hardest (we worked on Walk on, Whoa, and Back at liberty) to get some good verbal praise and for me to spend a couple seconds rubbing that nice itchy spot right along the bottom of his neck.

Evening Chores

6:00 PM - Finish up training and start gathering hay bags for evening feeding. Pat fills the waters while John and the intern(s) fill and distribute hay bags

Around 7:30 to 8:00 PM - Dinner! Usually it's one of the interns' jobs to pick salad greens from the garden and greenhouse, and John makes the rest of dinner

9:00 PM (ish) - The day comes to a close. Each day we take turns for who washes dishes (except of course the cook!), and then everyone heads their separate ways to clean up and get ready for bed.

I'm missing Mustang Camp a whole lot right now and can't wait to get back into the busy school/work/dance schedule again. If at some point life presents the opportunity to go back to Mustang Camp, I'd take it in a heartbeat. But for now I must say, good bye Mustang Camp, and good luck Pat and John. I wish you the best of luck and good health in the future.

Love,

Lynna

Bye Ginger!

Ginger has officially gone to her new home. Pat got a text from John this evening "Ginger delivered. She did great" -- best thing I could have possibly hoped for. She has really come a long way and turned into a great horse. The past two days we spent doing some last-minute trailer training. And it was just enough! This morning, I stepped into the trailer and asked her to "step up" with me, and up she came. No lead rope, no fuss, nothing. Love that horse...and she looked just darling in her pretty new halter too!

The trailer of doom is ready to swallow Ginger up...

Step up here and eat hay? Sure, thanks!

This morning's post on how the weather is supposed to be stormy didn't seem to hold true here at Mustang Camp. Not a drop of rain today. Clear skies and plenty of sun to dry up the muck that yesterday's rain created. Fingers crossed it keeps up...

Rain, rain, go away

It's September - which means RAIN.

Ginger is supposed to get delivered to her new home today -- as long as the roads are still open. It rained off and on all day yesterday; not so hard, but enough to make everything wet. Unfortunately, it's rained much harder in other places nearby, and the forecast has rain through the weekend until early next week.

John's adoption event in Chama this weekend may get rained out. Fingers crossed there is some clear sky and some horses get adopted!!

I'm supposed to drive out from here Friday morning to fly to St. Louis. Fingers crossed the road conditions are passable. Otherwise I have to deal with flight changes and that whole mess. Obviously that means the universe is telling me I need to stay at Mustang Camp longer :) Going to miss the horses the people and the environment so much... Civilization here I come! Eventually...

Leaving Mustang Camp means one more thing -- I won't be doing daily (well, I should stop kidding myself - more like every 2-3 days...) blog posts anymore. I plan on doing one more "formal" post to wrap up the summer, but I think that will be the end of this blog. Although I didn't plan it this way, I hope that this blog can be a valuable resource to potential interns/volunteers/etc. interested in coming to Mustang Camp to get an idea of the great work Pat and John are doing here in Largo Canyon -- and what life will be like once they get here!

Crow Canyon Petroglyphs

Went on a little adventure this morning down to Crow Canyon to see the petroglyphs. It was a lot of fun and incredibly interesting. Teresa was a cryptographer for many years for the National Geographic and she really knows her stuff. She was able to decipher and tell the stories of the rock art and help us figure out the meaning behind the artwork. Overall, we discovered that the area had been used as a Cleansing Ground, where warriors went after a battle to purge their bodies of the weakness and evils they had taken on from the enemies they had killed during the battle. The warriors would be sort of put into a trance (hallucinogenic methods) and left in a cave for 4 days. The elders would watch over them and make sure the warriors did not get dehydrated or die of starvation during the 4 day fast, but this was a time for the warriors to be reborn with a clean slate. Likely during this time, the events of the battle would also be recorded in the stone at this location, so that all of the evils of war could be left at that place and the warriors could return home to their normal lives and not a word of the battles would be mentioned thereafter.

Here are some photos from the petroglyphs. I definitely can't remember most of the meanings, but I've included what I do remember.

A busy scene. The jagged lines on the LEFT mean a flash flood warning. There is also corn growing out of a pueblo building. The hourglass shape is actually two arrowheads pointed at each other and signify war. The man in the middle with the spikes coming out of his back is a healer. If you can see the people with horns on their heads, those signify power. There are also a couple of people on horseback.

Another scene with a lot of death. The commas are spirits, and the upside down people are dead. The carvings that look like bird prints are actually directional symbols, pointing toward the STEM of the bird print (mostly downward in this picture). It was interesting to see the foot prints too, with the circles around them. Teresa said those were symbolic of moccasins, which I believe were worn by the Ute tribe Native Americans.

A series of bows and arrows, and more of the symbols of war.

A photo of Teresa, explaining another petroglyph to us. I think she said those stalks were milkweed, and the person with the giant shield and the horns is a Kiowa Indian warrior.

More visitors!

Today, a family of grandmother, daughter, and grand daughter arrived to see the mustangs and the training we are doing with them. Some really nice people, and it's been very interesting talking to them. The grandmother worked for Nat Geo for many years, so when they drove by the petroglyphs on the way here, she of course had to stop by to take pictures! Hmm... I haven't even been up to see the petroglyphs yet! Supposedly the plan tomorrow is to take them to Crow Canyon, a few miles down the road (just past where we got stuck that one time and had to walk home...), where there are a bunch of pictographs and other ancient Native American rock art.

Grandma fell in love with Homer Simpson, the stocky black gelding who has just started his training. Their trip was supposed to be a shopping trip for 9 year old grand daughter Lily's new horse, but Teresa has fallen in love with Homer. They have their eye on Simon for Lily, but they don't want a horse until Lily's 10th birthday in March -- when Simon will be long gone; unless they work out some deal with John to reserve him and maybe pay for extra boarding/training or something. Not sure what's going to happen with that. Teresa also really loves the donkeys. I don't blame her, who could resist! We joked a little about how many animals we'd be able to fit in the trunk of her RAV4... :)

Tomorrow should be a fun day. It's late and I guess I should get some sleep - morning chores are getting long and hard with only 3 people and 59 animals... We should have a couple extra helping hands tomorrow morning though!

Sunshine

So the lady from Silver City finally made it this morning. She ended up not trying to navigate the dirt roads last night and stayed at a motel in Bloomfield for the night. The exciting part about her being here: she brought her puppy! Such a cutie pie. It's a little black and white chihuahua mix named Sunshine, and just a bundle of adorable. She's about 4 months old, so just a couple weeks younger than Annie. At first, Ms. Annie was a little perplexed about this little wriggly thing, but by lunch time they were sharing a toy and playing with each other. So proud of Annie today - she is so gentle with the other littler puppy! There is obvious self-handicapping going on and Annie will flop onto her back and let Sunshine grab at and shake her collar.

It was a good day today, introducing the lady to all the horses (and the donkeys!) and also showing her the training we do with each of them. She has a significant amount of experience training horses, often ones that have been mis-handled and have issues, but she's getting older now and is looking for a horse that won't be too much energy for her. Her belief is that she wants a horse that's less than 6 years old, since that was the age she was told you should definitely start a horse to train them to drive/ride -- but she seems somewhat willing to take a chance on the older horses. She was actually very attracted to my darling Miss June, even though she is 14 years old, just because she's such a calm horse with a good disposition and plenty of confidence with her many years of life experience. I think she will probably end up adopting Elmo though. When she initially came up, she was interested in Elmo and Barney, but Barney's a bit too much horse for her to start as a project right now. Elmo would probably be a good match for her though. Eager to learn and also would so very much appreciate the spoiling and doting I'm sure she will be providing to whichever horse she chooses. The other horse she's interested in is Mr. Batman. He's going to be a really cool horse, and he's such a sweetheart with people (other horses, not so much).

In other news, Chuny is leaving tomorrow... Super short notice since her friend just messaged her this week that they were going to be in Dallas this weekend -- so Chuny is catching a ride to Albuquerque with Marie (the lady from Silver City), and will probably take the bus to Dallas. Seems like we will be getting a couple more volunteers coming early next week though, which will be very helpful for husbandry chores.

The Simpsons

As promised, we got the last 4 BLM horses delivered today. Of course they had to follow with the cartoon naming scheme, so these guys got to be the Simpsons family.

There's Marge, who is a 10 year old mare, and her baby. At first we were told the baby was a boy, but upon closer inspection she's definitely a beautiful little lady! Her name is now Maggie. She's got the most elegant long legs and pretty neck. She's going to be quite a looker when she grows up! But the first order of business will be to get comfortable enough to try eating out of the hands of those creepy humans... :)

Of the boys who just arrived, there is of course Homer Simpson, and the old boss Monty Burns. Homer looks like adult Sugarfoot on steroids. He's got a super wide frame and an enormous head, but itty bitty short stocky tree trunk legs. I haven't gotten a chance to take pictures of the new guys yet, but here's Homer's picture from the day we were up in Bloomfield helping out with the processing. Talk about disproportionate horse...

Tomorrow, the lady from Silver City arrives to see our training and of course fall in love with one of the horses. Should be fun!

Labor Day at Mustang Camp...

Not quite the beach adventures/BBQs/whatever else people do for Labor Day, but we had our own little Labor Day fun...

Spent the morning after AM horse chores (and a giant breakfast with freshly baked home-made biscuits) cleaning out the main living room. It'd been getting a little bit out of control the past couple days as Annie has been collecting "toys" on and around the couch. Unfortunately one of the great toys she found was a roll of toilet paper, so there was shredded toilet paper all over the couches and on the floor. BUT - it's all gone now! We swept, vacuumed, and took the rugs and couch covers outside to shake out the dust. We even went through the corner of free things and boxed up some clothes that had been sitting there to drop off at Goodwill.

We did all this cleaning because we are expecting a few overnight visitors in the next couple days. Either tomorrow or Wednesday, there is a lady coming up from Silver City, NM to spend a few days here and see the horses. She is interested in either adopting Barney or Elmo, and John is going to try and talk her into getting a donkey too so the horse can have a friend -- we'll see what she thinks when she gets here! Next weekend there is supposed to be a grandmother and her 9 year old granddaughter coming to see none other than the wonderful SIMON :) He's coming along great and I'm sure he will capture their hearts like he has mine!

We also spent some time talking out logistics this morning. John's goal for the month is to get 15 animals adopted and off the property. We did a count of all our equid residents and there are currently 55 horses/donkeys/zebra in total. Plus we are getting the last 4 of the BLM horses this week, probably tomorrow. That puts us up to 59 animals. Yikes!

John has an adoption event scheduled in Chama, NM the weekend I leave (Saturday and Sunday September 14th-15th!) He is hoping to get all of the Forest Service horses adopted by then -- meaning that Ms. June and dear Greta need to be finished with the training program by then! I'm not worried about June -- I took her for a walk on lead today out into a new pen and she took it all like a champ. Not worried one bit following me through narrow gates or walking around in a new area. The only problem we had was at the end of the session when she wasn't ready to go home yet! So of course she got to stay out and clean up hay crumbs off the ground ...no, none of our horses are spoiled, why do you ask? Greta is going to be a little bit more of a push to get done before I leave. She's come a long way, but every new task that comes along is a bit of a gamble in regard to how she will respond to it.

All in all, a long and busy day - whats new? :) Love Mustang Camp and wish I could stay forever...or take a mustang home with me... A girl can dream right?

Surprise!

Surprise -- Ginger is still here!

Bambi left yesterday, but Ginger stayed behind. We wanted to be absolutely sure that Ginger's adopter would be a good match for her, so John was going to meet the man and check out his place before bringing Ginger down. Luckily, John thinks the adopter will be perfect! The only thing we are waiting for now is to see if there is another horse that John can deliver in that direction at the same time, since it is way too expensive to make the 8+ hour (in reality 14+ hrs with tire problems!) round trip drive to Santa Fe for just one horse.

Greta has really made a turn for the better in the past couple days. All though her training, she has been scraping by on all the tasks -- meeting criteria but not exactly enjoying the training. She was always pretty angry-looking regardless of what we were doing. A few days ago, we did an impromptu pressure-release session with her when Pat and I tried to work with her together while she was on a lead rope but she went way over threshold and couldn't handle a "stranger" pulling lightly on her lead rope. We were hoping to do a session where she got rewarded for doing a "happy face" while Pat was interacting with her, but we ended up having to do a session where she learned to step towards us to release the pressure on her lead rope (plus get a food reinforcer too, since that's what she understands best as doing the right thing and it helped speed up the learning process by making it doubly reinforcing to come off the pressure). It was kind of stressful and seemed like a major disaster, but she's really come out of it with a different attitude. She is still eager to interact with me, but she is more calm about it now and will actually be curious about new things, rather than being super intense and getting aggressive if anything was new/unexpected.

Update on Simon:
Simon has now graduated out of the training stall and is now living with his old friends in a larger pen. At first he was sort of the outcast and would stand by himself while the three other boys were swishing each others' flies, but he was soon re-integrated into the group -- thank goodness, I was starting to feel sorry for him!! In terms of actual training, Simon is now leading around the central training space, and has learned to come off pressure, make inside an outside turns, and walk with his jaw at or behind my shoulder without pushing on me (the last one we worked on quite a bit today - he really wanted to be extra close and walk ahead of me for a while so Pat helped us work that out). I think I'm in love :) my sweet Simon really likes getting scratched right where the underside of his neck meets his chest, and when I scratch him there he sticks his neck out and purses his lips like "Oooh that feels good!" If only I could feasibly own a horse...maybe in 10 years or so.

Update on the new mares/foals:
All the mares and foals are finally named and now eating from our hands through the fence panels. Too bad I still need a cheat sheet to know the names of some of them...there are just too many! Most of them will even come up when we go in to clean their area to see if we have food. They actually became enough of a problem that we had to put out food on the far side of the pen to keep them from bothering us while we cleaned! Starting now, their training regimen changes a little bit. They will be fed loose hay in the AM and PM, and we will do a session of hand-feeding in the middle of the day. Handfeeding meals is very time consuming, and at this point it makes more sense to focus our energy to get the current batch of horses trained and out of here and then put the mares/foals into intensive training when spaces open up. Not sure if I will be here for any of that -- I sure hope so! I already have a favorite :) her name is Jasmine and she's a yearling who has very pretty feminine features. She's probably the least fearful of all the horses and will nicker at you to bring her more food when you're doing a handfeeding session. She's going to be fun to train and probably fly through the program.