Mustang Anyone??? Part 3

OK. I know the suspense was killing you. We hauled round pen panels and a bucket of food over to William's "secret hideout". We lured him to the "trap" we had set with the bucket of food. It took a day or two to finally get him over to the panels. Our plan was to get him used to eating the sweet feed inside the panels by having one end open and when he was in there eating we would shut the other panel and then he'd be caught.

It worked!!! But, it was like, now what do we do??? We didn't know anything about this animal, where he had come from, had he ever been handled, etc. But now we had the responsibility of making sure he had water and food until we could figure out how to get him back to my house.

So, a day or two after we had him caught in the "trap" I was gone and my neighbor called me on my cell phone and said William is at your house. I couldn't believe it!! He rode his horse, Blaze, over there, threw a rope around William's neck and tied the rope off to the saddle on Blaze. He said he had a heck of a time getting him to the house, but he was so proud of himself. Plus, I never told you, but my neighbor was in his mid to late sixties at the time.

I finally got a halter on William and had the vet come out and check him over. When I was brushing him I noticed he had a mark under his long mane running almost the whole length of his neck. I did some research and found out it was a Freezemark that the Government(Bureau of Land Management aka BLM) puts on horses that they have caught out west and adopted out to people. They adopt out donkeys as well. Come to find out William was caught in Nevada and was about 10 years old by the time I got him. Also, he had been adopted by someone. Well, it was obvious by the looks of William that someone must have let him go because he wasn't what they had anticipated. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

I still have William and he looks great now. He's a wonderful piece of yard art. He is what he is, a wild mustang stud. He doesn't like to be messed with and has long since gotten the halter off. We moved, before he got the halter off, and we brought him with us, but that's a whole other story. He has a pasture that he shares with our donkey Jack. They have bent the fence down so far that all they have to do is step over, but they know they have it so good that they never attempt to leave.