May 18, 2008

I've decided that the best idea is to get things ready to receive the mustang here at home rather than sending it out to Lucy's first. I worry that if I send it out to Lucy's first, I won't be able to get it back on a trailer for awhile and then won't get to get it home! If the mustang is here at the house, I can visit with it multiple times per day as opposed to once daily.

We are scurrying around making plans, checking catalogs, and choosing the best site to set up the pen. We will use round pen panels for the pen and add a shelter to that. The plan is to have a pen with about a 25' diameter, plus the space of the shelter. The program requires 5' high pen walls, but if I can get the Priefer Hoss panels, which are 6' tall and "mustang approved", according to their advertizing, I will be thrilled. Otherwise, I'll buy more of the 5'+ Priefert panels we've used for our round pen at the farm.

We'll borrow the panels from the farm to create a chute to get the mustang from the trailer to the pen, and keep a couple extra on hand in case we have need to create a chute for a vet issue. I hope not!

The mustang comes home next Saturday. With Elizabeth home for a few weeks, Charles will have a little extra help getting things ready. I will help too, of course, but I've also got my real estate exam scheduled for Thursday morning, and I'm hoping to pass on the first try! Besides, Charles & I do not hang wall paper together well, so I think that my best job for now is cheerleader--rah rah!

Charles designed a nice shelter that he thinks he'll be able to build in a few days, and has headed off to Home Depot to get lumber as I type. Tomorrow morning, roadbase and decomposed granite are being delivered. We'll use this as footing for the pen so that we do not end up with a mud pit when all the grass in the small pen is eaten/trampled.

We are going to be SO BUSY the next few days!

I am extremely excited about this summer's project! It will surely change what I'd had in mind to stay busy and keep Eileen entertained. I expect to learn a lot--about myself, about human-horse interactions, about wildness. I cannot even really imagine right now what this wild animal will be like. I hope it is not terribly frightened when it gets here, although I cannot imagine it will not be. Can you imagine it? First, this poor thing was rounded up from its homeland, then shipped to Texas where it has been turned out for the past couple of months with other yearlings, and then it will be chased into a chute and onto a trailer, then travel an hour to my house, doors of the trailer opened into another chute leading into a pen. It will probably be able to sense the horses next door at Switch Willo and I hope this is a comfort to it.