An Old But Important Post About Stallions

Responsible Management

Spearheading the off site breeding program for the Corollas is quite a responsibility. We owe the highest duty not only to the strain, but to the individual horses. If a horse must be removed from the wild everything possible must be done to insure that that horse has a great quality of life. That means that we must work to insure that it has the opportunity to live as natural of a life as possible as a domestic horse. It is a shame for any horse to live a life of stables, shoes and sugar, but it is particularly sad to see a once wild mustang consigned to such an existence.

We have to consider the quality of life of every stallion that has to be removed from the wild. We have to consider whether he can be properly managed and cared for as a stallion by a potential owner. If not we have only one ethical choice, to seek an owner with the necessary skills to manage a stallion safely so that he can remain in the breeding program.

The best hope that we have for the program is that, with proper motivation and instruction, these skills can be learned.

On Saturday the little rider depicted above had her first 25 mile ride. She rode the first 15 miles on Manteo, a Corolla stallion, and the last 10 miles on Trade Wind, another Corolla stallion.

She is only 7 years old. Manteo and Tradewind each represent hope for the Corollas. So does their little seven year old rider.

A New Birth of Freedom

My life is changing--radically. Tuesday our team of Sheriff and Commonwealth Attorney (called district or state's attorney in many other states) were returned to office by landslides. Aside from meaning that I am still employed, the end of a campaign brings relief that only those who have been through one can understand. Jen and Elise are moved into the Little House and I will no longer spend hours each day feeding, watering, checking fence etc. Rebecca is back in Virginia and will be as important to our operation as she was years ago.

It is highly likely that the horse lot, as participation continues to grow, will be much less of a financial drain on me than it has been in years past. I have a team of adults that I can absolutely rely on.

We now have, without a doubt, a sufficient number of pure Colonial Spanish horses to be a viable foundation stock for a robust Corolla offsite breeding program. The settler's farm is nearly completed. Our Mill Swamp indian Horses group facebook page is booming.

And, to my intense surprise, I am going to New jersey in the morning and I do not have a deep sense of dread and foreboding. Aside from the fact that I have a visceral hatred of travel, I have never been able to relax that far away from the horse lot--never could be sure that they were all ok.

And I am going to New Jersey with a very special purpose. I am going to be in my first endurance race. I won't be alone. We are carrying two Choctaws, a Banker from Shackleford, and a blm/ssma cross. We will stand out in the crowd--both because we are riding mustangs and because we will not be loaded up with endurance racing accouterments--ponchos, boots, our regular saddles and we shall see how things go.

And we are going to push the limits on every aspect of our program. I will write much more--likely another book.

I will be free to dedicate the rest of my life to something that matters to me, encouraging the development of more programs like ours all over the country. That will mean more clinics, more writing, more videos....and more hate mail from denizens of the established horse world.

(I hope that they go easy on me. After all, I am such a delicate and sensitive little thing.)

Race Horses?

Yes, I remain opposed to nearly all forms of equine competition. Yes, I continue to hate few things more than traveling. Yes, I firmly believe that the only thing worse for the future of Colonial Spanish Horses than being rejected by the established horse world would be for them to be embraced by that world.

And, yes, I am getting ready to compete in an endurance run. Yes, it is all the way up to New Jersey. However, nothing that we are doing is designed to seek the good graces of the established horse world. We plan to take three Choctaws, a Shackleford, and a BLM/SSMA cross to the Mustang Memorial Endurance Race in two weeks for the sole purpose of gathering that much more objective proof of the extraordinary athleticism of these historic horses.

And more specifically, to be able to give an even stronger answer to that question, "Can these little horses really carry a grown up?"

I doubt if any rider at this race will weigh more than I do.

 Joey will carry me just fine.

And the Fight Goes On

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Wild and Free

I do not ever want anyone to mistakenly assume that the training and breeding program that we have developed for the Corollas will be an adequate substitute for maintaining a wild herd on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. All we are creating is a safety net, and a tenuous one at best.
Before cars, before the Civil War, before Nat Turner and Dred Scott, before the Constitution, before the Revolution, and yes, even before the settlers landed at Jamestown, Spanish Colonial horses roamed free in the southeast. Now they only reside wild and free and purely Spanish at Corolla and Shackleford.
They survived the wars. They survived the hurricanes. What ever the threat, they survived. If your ancestors, be they black, northern European, Indian, or Spanish, lived in the triangle drawn from Richmond to New Orleans to Key West; between the early 1500's and the American Revolution, they rode and worked these little Spanish horses. These horses carried my ancestors to their weddings, their wars, and their funerals.
Why should they be preserved? Because we do not have the right to extinguish history.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And I bet some of them were too heavy to carry. Or am I beating a dead horse?

There are folks who work to preserve prarie, even after barbed wire became the norm. (Really..there is a program at Columbia that maintains a few acres of twelve foot deep prarie grass..such as what you would have read about in " By the Shores of Silver Lake" by Laura Ingalls Wilder...) and there are those who sail square riggers...still keeping their backs to the wind despite the switch to steam...it will always be so. And there will always bethose who rail against those who do...that is too dangerous, stop breeding garbage, you cannot do that because I said so...right...watch me. I suppose it is human nature to meddle, and has often caused me to wonder at our life expectancy.
There are a few groups dedicated to preserving these horses...there needs to be more.

The Importance of Intransigence

After over a decade of building our program of teaching natural horsemanship to children and novices-more particularly teaching them to train and ride will horses--our program has never been stronger. More horses, more riders, more volunteers, more educational programs and more lives changed than ever before.

There are many elements behind this success but the most important is our intransigence. At every step of the way we have refused to make a single concession to the established horse world. To do so would not create a slippery slope. It would create a cliff for the program to fall off of.

Our program is revolutionary. Revolutions fail when, after achieving a modicum of success they revert to the ways of the old regime.

As long as the scorn of the established horse world continues to be heaped on what we do, we will know that we are succeeding.