National Mustang Association Inc

THE LEAST DISRUPTIVE APPROACH

NMA’s mission is to preserve and protect horses in the wild and to promote conscious and humane management. To carry out the mission for the wild horses that require intervention and advocacy, NMA attempts to take the least-disruptive approach possible for the horses, whether they are federally protected under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. The options for rehoming horses are to place wild horses in sanctuaries or to adopt the horses into a life of domesticity by qualified adopters under the organization’s adoption and training programs. Either approach comes with costs related to veterinary and other care, including but not limited to the following: sedation darting, gelding, micro-chipping, providing medical intervention, vaccinating, transporting, handling, using equipment and supplies, providing feed, water, and supplements, and covering general administrative and operating expenses. When adopting tamed horses, the handling costs increase per horse, A horse that is gentled and able to be handled safely around humans makes for a much more desirable adoption candidate. NMA typically does not provide the horses with advanced training such as saddle training. Pregnant mares with foals by their side during the gathering process may add to the time that NMA must retain custody and care of those horses, as foals require weaning before rehoming.

GENTLING VERSUS TRAINING

To promote conscious and humane management, NMA’s approach makes a distinction between the process of gentling a wild horse and training a wild horse. According to Monique Wylde Williams, Equine Ecologist, and volunteer to NMA, people may tend to conflate the gentling process with training, but the two are better seen as distinct processes, whereby the gentling process is done first and not rushed. Gentling a horse acclimates the horse to living among humans and a daily schedule that involves the horse being watered and fed reliably. The horse is allowed time to generate a positive association with living among humans. This habituation process leads to a more relaxed, calm, and curious state of mind that then leads to openness and a willingness to be trained. Only after gentling, then the horse may be trained to don a halter, be led by and asked to stand to have its feet handled, or to be trained for easy loading into a trailer and unloading from a trailer, and so forth.

PRINCIPLES OF HABITUATION AND LOW-STRESS STOCKMANSHIP

Conscious and humane approaches to gathering horses involve a gradual habituation process during the bait-trapping of horses. Conscious and humane approaches to moving horses in confinement and for loading and unloading them for transport employ low-stress stockmanship skills. These principles have been proven to reduce the flight or fight responses in horses and to mitigate the chances of horses and humans suffering injury or death during activities of gathering and removal. In the early stages of humans becoming acquainted with wild horses, the humans have a remarkable opportunity to shape how the horse sees the human: as a friend or a dangerous foe not to be trusted. For more information on these habituation principles, please see Tim McGaffic’s website. For information on low-stress stockmanship, see Whit Hibbard’s site. Additionally, see Whit Hibbard and Dawn Hnatow’s article on building a bud box.