(Trigger warning: This post contains graphic descriptions and images)
Like most of my horse acquisitions, this one followed the traditional trajectory…
At first I was optimistic, buoyed by an inflated sense of my own ability. Secondly there was regret, sprinkled with that conversation I always seemed to have with myself.
“Good one, dickhead…You’ve bitten off more than you can chew…AGAIN!” 🙈
And in normal circumstances, the third phase comes when the adrenaline subsides and the problem solving begins – and I think to myself.
“You got yourself into this mess… You better bloody work it out”
And generally, I’m pleased to say what follows is some kind of triumphant period where the horse and I finally start singing from the same sheet of music 🎵
But unfortunately, this time – that didn’t happen…
Because these horses were brought in from the bush as a mature brumby stallions…. and sadly for one of them, it just didn’t work out.
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It started in September 2023, when our brumbies (the name for our wild horses in Australia) were being barbarically shot, sometimes up to 15 times by a government directive.
Their bodies were left to bloat and decay in full display in the National Parks and the culling was indiscriminate.
‘Ferals’ they call them…
And explain that brumbies are ruining the native ecosystem. Which isn’t exactly incorrect, albeit with gross exaggeration to justify the killing.
However, these political people also repeatedly announce that the peppering of bullets is the ONLY way to remove the horses because “rehoming is impossible” – and let me tell you, thats an enormous, boldfaced lie.
I’d recently taken an interest in brumbies and had bought my first one as soon as I moved to my new farm in the Spring of 2023.
His name was Floyd and he had only been caught 3 months earlier…and oh my GOODNESS – he was the sweetest, most affectionate friendly little guy you could ever imagine.
He literally made my heart sing…
I took this video on the first morning after I brought him home to start a new life on the farm.
So with serotonin hits like this, you can probably see why I thought it was important to try and save some more of these little guys from being so horrifically sprayed with bullets 😬
And once I’d made the decision, it wasn’t hard to find them. In fact, these horses had been coming up again and again in my news feed but I’d subconsciously been thinking
“Stallions? Nup…No can do”… before scrolling on to whatever other pieces of social media doom I’d needed that day.
Now as a person in possession of a vagina, I’m OK with saying that sexism usually doesn’t swing my way.
It’s a man’s world or so they say, except in the case of brumbies where it’s pretty dangerous to be born a boy….
Much less, with a decade of fighting, mating and natural behaviour under your belt 🤷♀️
See, even in the white bread equestrian world, it’s weird to see a stallion. They’re usually rowdy and horny and a pain to take in public – so mostly they’re kept just for breeding and you don’t often see them out and about.
And yes, while I know there are exceptions to the rule, let’s not split hairs here. My point is that most people wouldn’t have the facilities, skills or desire to take on any stallion – much less one that was totally wild, and straight from the bush.
And let’s get one thing clear… I DIDN’T have the skills or desire to take one on either and I probably would have preferred another youngster or even a mother and baby, like everyone else.
But I figured being born with nuts, was probably not a good enough reason to be shot in the guts and left to die on the side of a hill 🙄
So with that, I contacted a Wild Horse Rehoming Program and offered a home to two of their recently captured stallions. It’s estimated that their ages were between 12 and 14.
A few days later the distinguished gentlemen arrived via a specially constructed transport crate and were released into our cattle yards – with all the clanging and banging you’d expect of such.
Anth was hiding in the yards like a weirdo and managed to capture the exact moment they arrived 👇
At the outset, I realised that there probably weren’t too many rules for this stuff… And that the stuffy, uptight world of equestrian where there are rules for EVERYTHING – right down to which side of a horse is ‘correct’ really had no place here.
My plan was to do it patiently. To work it out as I went along, with welfare being paramount and using positive reinforcement (for as much as was practical).
And for the first week, things went better than expected….
By the second day they were eating out of my hand and on the third I had touched them both. The little roan fella was certainly more confident but the bay was particularly food motivated so it didn’t take him long to catch on to the idea that humans weren’t actually all that bad.
Truth be told, things were looking really promising… until I had a visit from someone ‘that knew better’ which made me instantly lose faith in my own ability 😒
Because the thing is, most of us ‘horse folk’ fall into one of two camps… Those that know everything and those that don’t know enough.
And when you’re in camp ‘Don’t Know Enough’ it’s easy enough to be swayed by someone that seems to know it all…
Which is pretty ridiculous because often that divide is a matter of ego rather than experience 🤷♀️
As an aside, I’m a big fan of positive reinforcement and clicker training for horses… and in the equine world it’s not a concept that’s met with much enthusiasm.
Anyway, the Leader of Camp I Know Everything told me in no uncertain terms that positive reinforcement training was the WRONG way to train these stallions and that needed to do it differently.
So with my spine seemingly replaced with a strand of spaghetti, I let her into the yards to show me ‘the right way’ 🙄
Her method was to put pressure on the horse until it faced towards her, then she’d release the pressure and take a step back… Which she thought was great because within an hour, she was closer than she’d been at the start 🤷♀️
And right at the end she said “Did you see that? I could have touched him then..but I didn’t”
Which was weird because I’d been touching them both all week, with five spare minutes and a handful of hay.
But oddly… and maybe because I’m still indoctrinated with the notion that I should be polite in the presence of Camp Leaders.. I just watched and silently wondered why on earth this way was supposed to be better.
And sadly within two sessions of doing things ‘better’….things got remarkably worse. Because by encouraging them to face her and removing the pressure (by stepping back) when they did… she’d actually taught them that they could cause her to retreat just by squaring up 🙈
It started with them facing up and then moved into a frustrated shake of the head… and when one pinned his ears she said ‘That’s enough for one day’ and drove out the driveway, never to be seen again.
And I’m sure as she left, she thought she’d done me a favour but in reality I was now by myself with two frightened, hormonal horses that had been taught how to get rid of humans.
So the next day I thought “Screw this, I’m going to go back to the way that was working before” and I went into the yard with a handful of hay.
In I went & approached the little roan boy, who up until this point had been a bit braver with his training…
He edged towards me as he usually did but in the last few strides pinned his ears and charged.
And let me tell you, for someone with chubby little penguin legs – you’d be astounded how spectacularly I ‘alley oooped’ myself up and over that fence.
“Oh fuck!”
I thought when I got to the other side….
“Fuckedy, fuck, shit, fuck balls… What the hell happened there?”
And it was at that point I remembered I was home by myself and that things could have gone really, really pear shaped.
So later that day, once Anth came home, I wanted to see if that was just a freak moment or if I, in fact had a problem on my hands…
So full of bravery, that I found Lord knows where – I made my way back into the yards.
This time, I was armed with a dressage whip in one hand and hay in the other so when he pinned his ears and came at me again, I at least something to defend myself with.
Or so I thought…
Only a whack with the whip didn’t worry this ballsy little stallion one bit… He didn’t flinch or break stride -he just kept coming straight for me.
In fact the only indication that he had even felt the whip connect, was the sound of a fright-fart that popped out at the moment of impact.
“Oh double fuck” I thought, as once again my penguin legs leapt over the railings “Of course he doesn’t care about my flimsy stick of fibreglass…This guy has FOUGHT other stallions his entire bloody life”
And as the fear and adrenaline subsided, I realised I needed to do exactly what i’d told the Rehoming people i’d do if I got into trouble.
So I went inside and made a very important phone call…
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equine behavioural euthanasia
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equine behavioural euthanasia