[Music] every time I go to a horse sale I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to find typically I like to peruse the loose pen which means these horses and mules will sell with no information given on them I try my best to evaluate each one to see if they have any problems I'm really searching for those horses that might find themselves in an unfortunate situation I check their eyes I look at their feet I also try and take a look at what is going on inside their [Music] mouths when the auction starts I typically
have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to be bidding on but every once in a while there'll be a horse that comes into the ring that I have no intentions of bidding on and somehow I'll still end up with the horse on my trailer at the end of the day 2 years ago I purchased one of those horses when this little girl came into the ring the auctioneer called and called but nobody bit on her even though I knew she was a wild horse I decided to take a chance on her and ended
up getting her for only $25 these Wild wild horses can be extremely dangerous typically they have never seen a human before they make it to the sale horses like this little girl have a little bit of a precarious spot out in the wild there are a lot of free roaming horses in the Western United States when these horses land on federally protected land they are managed by the Bureau of Land Management judging by her paperwork my Philly came off of The Crow reservation which does manage its Wild Horses a lot differently in Montana there is
actually only one herd management area that is overseen by the Bureau of Land Management the prior mountain horses are well known some of them have even been turned into Brier horses when they do come up for sale they are some of the few that sell for big bucks on the online auctions had my Philly been born just one mountain range to the east she would have been underneath the blm's protection reservation horses are typically gathered and then sold at auction to the highest bidder when I finally got this girl home I thought the $25 investment
was well worth it although she was pretty fractious she did have very good confirmation which can be tricky to find in a reservation horse in addition to the blood of wild horses they also have some domestic blood mixed in I let her just hang out for a week and then I started right in on her training these wild horses are extremely fractious typically even if you only pay a few dollars for them they are a huge time commitment [Music] thankfully this girl had a little bit of sense to her and I was able to teach
her how to stand still for me to touch her with my stick I was also able to get just a plain cotton rope around her neck to begin to teach her how to come to pressure unfortunately when sent to auction these wild horses do get exposed to a lot of pathogens this mayor did blow an absess right through one of the suture lines in her skull since at this point she was still basically unhandled I did have to treat her with oral antibiotics and anti-inflammatories due to her age she was getting a milk replacer pallet
to help her stay strong as she fought off her infection since I do live in Montana the weather can change at any moment in the fall I work with a lot of unhandled horses and sometimes you just have to make do with what you have at the time with a pretty severe storm looming I had to move this girl across the parking lot and drop her off into the barn with the door secured I finally had her in a stall once she was healthy and done with her quarantine I was able to introduce her to
a friend I was also able to start back in on her training the winter can be really brutal but this girl grew a amazing winter coat I have worked with quite a few BLM Mustangs and this little girl really wasn't too different she did experience some reoccurring abscesses that made myself and the vet very nervous for a while we put her on a second round of some heavyduty antibiotics eventually the hematoma on her rear end and her ankles seemed to clear up just fine 2 months after I bought heard this girl finally started to settle
in and enjoy the touch of a [Music] human during the coldest part of the winter it is extremely hard to get any horses worked since this little Philly did get the goahead from from the vet to continue her work I did start back in on her halter training due to her incredibly thick winter coat however she did begin to sweat during some of our sessions since she was a pretty scared and fractious horse to begin with I didn't want to make any of her training experiences uncomfortable for her so I went ahead and gave her
the winter off I dialed in her nutrition program she got some vitamin E some flax seed oil and by the time winter was about over she started investigating me and opening up her mind a little bit more after having this girl for around 6 months is when I really got started in seriously with her halter training I know for some people that may seem like a really long time to put it off but since this girl did have so many medical problems and issues in the beginning I think she just needed to relax it was
really nice to rely on some of the other horses to teach this girl manners in a herd since she was taken from her mother way before she ever should have been weaned it was part of her development that was [Music] lacking I decided to call this girl Scarlet because of her fiery red coat although I hadn't been able to brush her yet I knew that in the springtime when this nasty long hair shed out that she was going to be a gorgeous Copper Penny color throughout her halter training I used techniques that I had used
in the past on Mustangs while Scarlet had grown to be quite outgoing and a little bit more Brave than when she got here she still had trouble accepting a few really scary parts of this process [Music] despite being hyper aware and extra flighty about most things this girl did have a pretty good brain between her ears eventually it really warmed up here and I was able to start desensitizing this horse with water this is one of my favorite tools to use when you can't actually go up and touch a horse consistently with your hands you
can stay pretty far away from them and also desensitize them to things touching them a bonus of course is that they get much cleaner and they start to lose their winter hair a little bit faster with Scarlet beginning to look like a much more domesticated horse it was time to start actually introducing a halter to her before I ever had a halter on Scarlet she did understand giving to pressure I could lead her around her little round pen to the left and right the most scary part of Scarlet's halter training was her accepting all of
the crazy things that I was doing skipping around her pen or when I accidentally moved my arms in the wrong way would set her off this is a pretty boring part of horse training that has to get done if you want to get these flighty horses to calm down eventually finally I managed to get her halter on for the very first time although this is a huge step we still had a ton of work to do [Music] eventually scarlet got pretty used to all my Shenanigans she started getting a really shiny hair coat I began
working with her on lunging and picking up her feet I introduced her to my Canine Companion Huckleberry she definitely started coming out of her sh a little bit more and I just continued chipping away at her until we were able to get out into the bigger part of our round pen and continue with her training after 30 days of solid halter training this girl was a much different horse she could lunge both directions in an open space I could pick up her feet without any hassle and she was really starting to understand how to ground
tie I spent the next few month just honing in her skill getting her Fed Up and continuing to see her blossom into a beautiful young horse eventually tiny introduced herself to Scarlet as well because Scarlet has a really straight legs and almost perfect confirmation she really didn't need any corrective [Music] trimming after a few more baths with soap this girl be to Sparkle like I thought she would when I very first saw her in the sail ring I continued to refine all of the things that she already knew every session she would calm down just
a little bit more until she was going around very relaxed in the round pen I could move each one of her feet separately and change speeds she started carrying herself in a more positive way and this is when I really started to see her developing some more [Music] muscle every once in a while she would get scared of something new like a sponge that I was using she had didn't seen before because I had taken her training nice and slow she was always pretty quick to come [Music] around one thing that she did have a
lot of trouble with was allowing me to take off her halter and put it back on for many many months she wore a halter pretty much 24/7 and I would put a new one on over top of the existing halter her she was extremely sensitive on her muzzle but eventually with the help of treats she got better at that too compared to the horse I had purchased almost a year ago she was beginning to look like a completely different Philly [Music] when we got to the um Mark I thought it was probably high time she
got her own stall with a run in the barn for winter it had been a bit of a struggle to get this girl to accept being in a stall little girl she really did feel the most comfortable when she could see out into the Horizon something that is fairly common with most Wild Horses although she was a lot more calm than when I got her she still could not find the courage to come into this stall on her own we did a lot of training with this but she just never really wanted to come inside
I decided to give this setup to another horse and she could just come into her own regular stall in the winter it can be a little bit tricky to get the horses work during the Montana winter but I made sure to take this girl out as often as I could just to refine her skills she became Really Brave and Sassy but there were times when she would look at the world with the whites of her eyes [Music] when it finally got way too cold for her to be working outside she did get a bunch of
time off in the winter when it finally began to warm up again she started spending a lot more time [Music] outside she seemed to do really well anytime it was above around 20° she ate as much hay as I would put in front of her drank lots of water and really enjoyed her special wintertime Mash hey [Music] girl eventually all of the snow that had accumulated over our Montana winter began to melt with the promise of spring on the way I got to calculating all of the things I was going to teach Scarlet this next
summer after having her for about 20 months I began teaching her how to tie all of my horses need to understand how to ground tie and lunge before I'll ever tie them to something solid I started Scarlet out on one of these tieback rings but she learned pretty quickly how to wiggle her way out of that eventually she was really comfortable with being hard tied to a solid post one thing that she did continue to have some trouble with was going in and out through doors this can be a hard thing for a wild horse
to wrap their minds around just because of the way their eyeballs are on their head as they pass through the door they can no longer see in front and behind them and this makes it a little bit tricky if they are scared like Scarlet it's not really a huge deal but it does need to be addressed when she scoots in and out of doorways this mayor also did have a tendency to try an escape from her pen while she was growing up so she did wear a pink emergency identification collar for a lot of the
time I had her this summer eventually she got to hang out without any halter on when she got much easier to catch with a lot of the big Milestones completed it was then time to start her in on her UND saddle training because she is a very sensitive girl I decided to start off with a simple Sur single and just a regular pad given her reactive nature she actually did much better than I anticipated [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] after Conquering the S single and the saddle pad eventually she would have to move on
to carrying a regular saddle I knew that this would be a little bit more difficult her what with all the little bits and pieces that a saddle has dangling from it but after owning her for 22 months I decided to see exactly how she would react she became a lot more outgoing over the summer and really seemed to enjoy learning new things it has been quite a while since I found something she is really afraid of given all of the time I've spent preparing her I am feeling pretty confident that she will be able to
tackle this next challenge without too much trouble [Music] [Music] as I had anticipated she did have quite a bit more trouble with all of the dangling straps hitting her at once I didn't make a big deal out of it when she got really scared I just went back in and continued to desensitize her to the saddle because of how scared she was I decided not to saddle her up completely and just work on dangling the straps over her body until she stood perfectly still because Scarlet is so reactive there is a high chance that if
she were to completely lose her marbles when getting saddled for the first time that she could very easily hurt herself it is really important for these young fractious horses that you don't accidentally hurt them throughout their training unfortunately I do see this tend to happen more often than it should and it will ruin a horse for a very long time okay little girl in order to give Scarlet some of her confidence back I put the S single back on her and decided to end our first saddling session a good girl sometimes I'm really surprised what
this girl can handle and what she cannot as she continued to gain confidence she turned into quite the character around the barn when I sat down to make this video recently I didn't realize how satisfying it would be to look back on this girl's Journey there were definitely some points along the way where I didn't know if she would ever turn into a calm and quiet horse while we've made some pretty decent steps to get there she does still have a long way to go recently she really has started to come out of her shell
she looks for me every day to give her extra love and scratches and of course a few treats every now and then recently we have Revisited the effort to get her into her own personal stall with a run for the winter with Frisco Bill's help she has really started to gain the confidence to tackle this very scary obstacle on her own it is definitely a work in progress and we will have to practice this every single day until the snow flies I was really only thinking this girl was going to get about 14 Hands tall
but right now she sticks at a whopping 15 there have been a lot of ups and downs over the last 2 years from a sickly little weanling to a gorgeous 2-year-old this girl has blossomed into a fabulous looking mayor even though her training has gone a lot slower than the the average domestic horse I think she's right on track for where I want her to be I really don't have any plans of riding this little girl anytime soon but am really hopeful that this winter we will spend some time working under saddle and learning the
skills that she's going to need when I eventually do swing a leg over [Music] her although she has cost me quite a bit more than my $25 investment I think that it was definitely worth all of the time and energy I've put into her at this point in time I can't ever imagine sending this girl onto another home although she continues to move up in her training I do think that she will be a hard horse for most people to get along with recently I introduced her to a new friend that will hopefully get her
to be a little more chill [Music] Zig this is Ziggy he is an 18-year-old Arabian that I got from the same auction Scarlet came from I've only had him about 6 months but he has proven to be a super chill calm guy that should do Scarlet a world of good sometimes accidental buys are the best buys after all Scarlet has really pushed me to improve my course training it has now taken her 2 years to learn what some domestic coures can learn in a few days but I really wouldn't have it any other way I
have so much more to do with this little girl over the next couple of years and I hope you will subscribe so you can follow her journey thank you so much for watching and stay tuned for the next video
