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Extreme Mustang Makeover August 8, Topsfield, Mass.

Posted by on August 12, 2015
Sleepy Karma

Sleepy Karma

I just attended Extreme Mustang Makeover Saturday, August 8 in Topsfield, Massachusetts with my friend Val, who had owned a wonderful mustang that lived to the age of 36. We were excited to see the wild mustangs and how they would behave.

EMM was a great event for the 33 trainers to show off their adopted mustangs. Each contestant was randomly given a five year old wild mustang mare. They had 120 days to work with and train their horse and present her to the public in EMM events for two days and also a juried contest at the awards night. This was followed by an auction of the 33 mustangs to the highest bidder to forever homes. The anticipation of the auction was bitter sweet. You wanted your horse to do well and get high bids, while your heart strings were being pulled out at the thought of losing a great friend and trusting horse that you might never find again. About half of the trainers could not let their horse go, so bid on and took their mustang back home. The others went to the lucky bidder.

Before the awards and auction event at 6 pm, everyone had plenty of time all day to walk around the barns and visit with the mustangs in their stalls. We talked with the trainers who could talk about their horse without crying and many attendees who came to see the event and pick out a mustang to bid on. The atmosphere in the barns were quite solemn and calm. You could see the sadness and worry in the faces of the trainers who would possibly never see their mustang again if it got adopted that night. The mustangs munched on hay, not realizing they could start another chapter in their lives that night.

Val's new friend

Val’s new friend

The horses in the adult class to be auctioned off were all about 5 year old mares. Trainers were hopeful their mustang would win an award and prize money and that they would look great so people would want to bid on them. But on the other hand, they knew how much they would miss the horse they had spent so much time and love and energy on all summer long. Their mustang was their baby and they had fallen in love with each other with amazing bonds.

Another barn was full of younger mustangs trained by rescue groups in the Mustang Heritage Youth Trainers Program Challenge. There was even a zebra mustang. (that’s a lot to put up with to be painted all over…)

 

Zebra Mustang

Zebra Mustang

Tension filled the air all day long and during the several exhibit shows on Friday and Saturday. As the decorated and groomed ponies were lead around the rink or ridden around the arena, some did tricks like rolling over and sitting on their rear end. Others could even jump up to 3 feet high jumps. They went through hoops, walked on tarps, up on podiums, through obstacles, stood on platforms and teeter-totter planks, stood quietly next to noisy plastic bags, chain saws, play guns, and some had balloons tied to their backs. One even jumped into the back of a pickup truck. They all did very well and showed how adoptable they were.

Also at the event was a check-in table for “America’s Mustangs” with programs, t-shirts, calendars and hats for sale. They handed out buttons and brochures to take with you. Their brochure said there are 40,000 mustangs on the range and 46,500 in holding pens. The AM promotes and organizes events to put adoptable mustangs in front of the public across the country in an effort to get them out of holding pens through training and gentling programs.

The table next to them was run by the BLM with 4 representatives. They also had free brochures, posters, pencils and erasers to hand out, even a free CD on how BLM takes manages our wild horses and burros and public lands. My friend and I could not resist asking them a few questions. One girl who was a BLM representative spoke up when I asked how many mustangs are in the wild and that I hoped the BLM does not round them up and eliminate them all. Her immediate response was that “Oh no, that would be impossible. There are so many mustangs. They double their population every year. We have to keep their population down for the health of the land.” She went on to said, “There are over 60,000 mustangs in the wild and 55,000 in holding pens. There are plenty of mustangs out there.” Well, hearing those high numbers of mustangs in the wild was enough to push our buttons a bit and so we started to question them more…like, “How did they get those numbers?” They said they have helicopters and volunteers counting the herds. There are so many of them, they could never catch them all. I said, “NH people are very concerned that the gas fracking, mining, and oil industry was taking over the public lands and would eventually pollute and ruin the land forever and become superfund sites.” I said, “Once the land and the mustangs are gone, they are gone forever.”  We told the BLM reps we felt the mustangs and burros were being elimininated, sterilized and gelded and won’t be viable herds for future generations to see. The BLM girl’s immediate response was that we write our Congressmen if we have any concerns. I told them, “I do that all the time and I hope they do the same thing to protect the mustangs and burros and I hoped they did their own research and they write their Congressmen, too, to save them and do the right thing.” At that point blood pressure was rising so we thanked them for their information and hard work and walked on, knowing that they were internally fed a canned and well-trained set of comments and answers to questions like ours. (They probably wished they did not give us a bag full of free pencils and a free cd.) They knew we were not real happy with their answers as they stood straight up in their “police-like” stance looking straight ahead as they answered our questions with great authority. It was like they were reading a script as they smiled at us. Another cowboy who was standing up behind the table with a black hat did not say a word. Perhaps he was security to protect the BLM reps from fired up advocates. Overall, they were very pleasant and acted like they were on the mustang’s side and very confident that all was well on public lands… … One BLM cowboy mumbled, “Maybe write to Bernie Sanders,” as we walked off.

During the day, other people commented on BLM statements, questioning their information. Spectators watching the young mustangs doubted their ages of being reported to be 2-3. In fact at the end of the auction, the auctioneer called one of them a yearling over the microphone. Hmmm …. One of the  trainers of one of the young ones also said that when she had a dental done, the vet said the baby was no more than 1 1/2 years old.
But that was about it to report, no protesters, no yelling or negative outbursts. Everyone was there hoping all the mustang mares got adopted. In fact, the announcer said he thought it was the best they had ever done for raising money at their makeovers, so all ended on a positive note.

It was an exhausting 2 days for the trainers and wild ones and adopters who still had a long night ahead of them, packing up and loading the mustangs and driving home with or without their horse.

Chelsea Miller spending a few more moments with Karma before letting her go to auction

Chelsea Miller spending a few more moments with Karma before letting her go to auction

Hope they are adjusting well to their new homes.

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