Alder Hill Farm’s Branson Rescue: Part 3 “The Redemption”: Painting #94

"Spirit"

So far the two trips to remove the three horses near Branson, Missouri had been filled with twists and turns and a great amount of frustration. Three wily horses, tame enough to receive affection and food, but smart enough to evade the best professional attempts at capture them, were beginning to tax the resources of The Alder Hill Farm Team. 

"Spirit"
9 by6 Watercolor
By LindaLMartinArtist



The Alder Hill Team had followed the three horses to a property  in various stages of neglect but in which the owners of the three horses were discovered. They lived in the house trailer on the property.

The revelation that the owners were still active in the lives of the horses put everything into a different perspective. Upon meeting the owners and surveying the situation it was decided that instead of a long drawn out court battle to seize the animals; it would be better for Alder Hill Farm to simply purchase the Animals. This would take the horses out of their immediate situation and prevent a lengthy and expensive legal battle. The owner was agreeable and said she would take $100 a piece for the three of them.

It is not the policy of Alder Hill Rescue to purchase horses. However,  in this case the condition and safety of the horses made it imperative that the animals be removed quickly and with as less additional financial impact as possible before the horses or a person was injured.

During the course of the visit Scott’s suspicion that the horses were mustangs was confirmed. The owner’s had adopted a mare and stallion from the BLM many years ago. The two original mustangs had passed away but these three were full brothers and sister from those two adopted Mustangs.  The oldest  stallion was 10 years old and named Prancer. The most dominant stallion was 8 years old, named Spirit. The filly was a 3 year old and named Honey.

Now the race was on, not only to raise the funds to remove the horses from their dangerous situation but also to prevent the filly from being bred by one of her brothers.

Alder Hill Farm Rescue with its policy of transparency kept a running documentation going on their Facebook page and on the pages of the Rescue team members. Nearly the total amount of money to purchase the mustangs and make additional return trips to capture them was raised by the time the team when back to capture the first two.

Keep in mind that the three had never been handled. They didn’t have even the most basic of training. In fact they had been treated as pet dogs not as horses from the time they were born. There was no documentation of vet care and their pasture with its long neglected fences was filled with old appliances, farm equipment and what the Alder Hill team described as simply trash.

The impression is, that the dominant stallion, left to his own devices and filled with generations of intelligent independent mustangs in his heritage, pretty much took things into his own charge and took care of his family in the best horse fashion he could.

On appointed day the Alder Hill Farm Rescue Crew brought their capture set up to capture and remove the first two horses.Once Alder Hill paid them $300.00 for the horses the owners waved all rights of ownership.   and very shortly had the two submissive horses haltered and an hour later loaded the first into the horse trailer. This being their first horse trailer ride, it was amazingly uneventful and the two horses did very well. Plus Alder Hill already had a request for adoption for the submissive stallion, Prancer.

Tonight's painting is of "Spirit" the Dominant Stallion.

The removal of the two submissive horses left the dominant stallion, Spirit, alone on the farm.  Without his herd, he was considerably less excitable than on the previous trips. On the day the Alder Hill team went back to get Spirit, the owner put horse treats on the top step of the house trailer and he stood there calmly munching on them ,while one of the volunteers slipped the halter on Spirit. With the help of the owner Spirit was caught in good order, loaded into the trailer and transferred to Alder Hill Farm. Over all the Alder Hill Rescue team made 4 trips to the Branson Location.

Update. Both Spirit and Prancer have now been gelded. Applications are being accepted now for Spirit’s adoption. Potential owners will be carefully screened.  Prancer’s adoption is in the process. Honey will spend another year at the farm growing up and being a horse, then after training she will be offered for adoption as well.

Alder Hill Farm Rescue is a 501c3 Non Profit in the state of Missouri that rescues horses of every breed and every color. To see how you can adopt an Alder Hill horse or donate to the ongoing work or sanctuary of the Alder Hill Mustangs please go to www.AlderHillFarm.org

Adoption: " Col. Mustard" Mustang A Day Challenge #52

Col.Mustard was the favorite of his owner Kat Moser. She saw this beautiful silver palomino in an auction and didn't know he was a mustang until she brought him home and saw the BLM freeze brand under his mane. She was very new to horses at the time and he was one of her first riding horses. " I only had him for a couple of years" she said in her email to me. " I wish I had taken more photos and especially one of his brand so I would know where he came from."

"Col. Mustard"
5 by 7 watercolor
by LindaLMartin Artist

Col Mustard was 24 when she sold him to his new owners. "no one could believe how old he was until they looked at his teeth" She guesses that he must be about 29 now.  This wonderful mustang made a good trail and companion horse. But Kat was very clear that Col. Mustard was the strongest horse in  the "corral".

Many times people wonder how an obviously well trained and acclimated horse like Col. Mustard gets in to the horse auction sale pipeline. Generally speaking there are very strict procedures for adoption, including  specifications as to the type of housing you must have for your adopted horse, what sort of food and vetting, as well as training you are responsible for. And there are spot checks as to making sure that you are keeping to the agreement and quality of care required. Then when you have met the requirements you can decide to return the horse or the horse is titled over to you by the BLM. This entire process takes about a year. Then you own the horse outright and basically are allowed to do any legal thing with the horse,  including keep or sell the horse, once you have title. 



Col.Mustard
refrence photographry by  Kat Moser.
Used by permission.



There is a data base at the BLM of every horse that is rounded up and branded. Those brands tell how old the horse is, where its original HMA was, and what the special information there is on there horse including the first person to hold the title of the horse and/or if the horse was returned etc. However once the horse is titled to a private owner the paper trail ends. If you would like to look into adoption there are two places begin looking.

 At the BLM sight: http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/prog/wild_horse_and_burro/adoptions.html

http://www.mustangheritagefoundation.org/

Another place you can look to adopt a mustang are private rescues who sometimes rescue or have a surrendered Mustang. They will handle them and train them, then guide you through the process to learn to connect or join up with your new mustang. Search on line for a Horse rescue local to you or you can start with one of these two registered non-profit organizations.

Alder Hill Farm in Missouri: http://www.alderhillfarm.com
Mustang U in Washington State:    http://mustangu.blogspot.com/

Should you have a horse you have obtained through a public auction horse sale or private sale, and suspect that it might be a mustang, because it has a  freeze brand on its neck, you can either check with your local brand inspector or  contact the nearest BLM office to find more information on your new horse.

Mustang A Day Challenge #35"Carmel" January Special to Benifit Alder Hill Farm Mustangs

Carmel: The Rest of the Story.

"Carmel Remembering"
Sanctuary Mustang Alder HIll Farm
8 by 10 oil painting on Canvas board
by Linda L Martin

Often times in owning horses we never get to know their entire story and how they came to be as they are because often horses are traded like cars sometimes having up to 10 owners in their lifetime if they reach old age. After I posted the story of Carmel yesterday I heard from one of Alder Hill Farm Rescue's Founders, Leslie Maxwell.

Leslie actually started in equine rescue in 2005 when she and her husband Craig rescued 60 purebred appaloosa foals from certain death. Although both Leslie and Craig are full time professionals with careers, their passion and lifestyle revolve around horses.Taking on these 60 babies, having them trained and then adopted to forever homes opened up a way of life that not only has been a vast learning experience but it has made Leslie uniquely qualified in the care of throw-away horses. Specifically horses who are the bi product of  the estrogen replacement therapy called Premarin also known as PMU.

This is in Leslie's own words regarding how Carmel came to be at Alder Hill:
"
" Thank you Linda for the lovely write up about this extra special boy!

Carmel was rescued from an auction in ND where he was being sold for drug testing along with 9 other mustang pinto foals. The foals were from a PMU ranch where the babies are often jerked away from their mothers at very young ages as the foals are concerned a 'waste by-product" of the industry. This would also fit in with the orphan foal syndrome symptoms that Carmel exhibits.
The foals that survive were often sold for slaughter, most commonly they were flown live from Canada to Japan where the young horse meat is a delicacy and is served thin-sliced, sushi style. We were able to take 5 of the foals, while Serenity Acres was able to save the remaining 5 foals. I am thankful there are not any PMU ranches left in the US and less than 20 in Canada at this time."

For those who don't understand the intricacies of Premarin or PMU manufacturing, basically what is done is to keep a mare pregnant and standing in a stall where she has very little exercise and a special bag is attached to her so that the estrogen laden urine can be collected for synthesizing into hormone replacement for menopausal women. These horses are kept in narrow stalls and  not even aloud to lay down. Today there is very little need for PMU ranches as Premarin is pretty much outdated therapy and much better medicines are used with out the side effects and the risk of certain cancers that come from using Premarin.



"Carmel"
Courtesy of Alder Hill Farm Rescue
Photo used by permission
Reference photography for the Challenge painting
used by permission of Scott Litherland via
Alder Hill Farm

 If the conditions of the Premarin mares, as well as, the total lack of need for the medicine, and the throw away foals, don't make you outraged by this whole process then think of this: Some of the mares in these facilities are mares that were taken off the range in the USA and purchased for this purpose then shipped to Canada. The question is how did this happen? Why is an animal deemed by law a National Treasure to be protected and preserved in the United States of America being sold to  the highest bidder to live an unnatural life of confinement, to have one foal after the other and never be able to nurture those foals and to have those babies ripped from them right after birth never to see them again. There is no knowledge of Carmel's Sire. But his mom and the mother's of all the PMU mustangs rescued by Alder Hill Farm  were mustangs.

It is no wonder that Carmel had lasting side effects from the treatment he received from birth until he reached Alder Hill Farm. There of course is  no way of knowing exactly how he was treated during the time before Alder Hill received him and his 4 companions. But for him to show the symptoms he does, with the inability to socialize, his treatment was most probably extreme.

The Oil painting I have done of Carmel tonight will be offered for sale in three weeks as it must have time to dry. A part of  the proceeds from the sale of this painting will go to fund the sanctuary mustangs at Alder Hill Farm.

Mustang A Day Challenge #34 "Carmel" January Special to Benifit Alder Hill Farm Mustangs

The challenge had challenges today, so I ended up doing a wonderful graphite drawing of today's Subject from Alder Hill. Occasionally there really are special needs horses and this particular mustang is one of those. Mustangs in general, because of the natural selection so predominate to their survival in the wild, must have a keen sense of the interaction with the herd as well as the ability to stay focused and problem solve. These qualities make Mustangs unique among all horses and once a person connects with that horse the relationship between horse and person is phenomenal in its intricacies and communication.



"Carmel"
Graphite on Watercolor Paper
5 by 7 inches
by Linda L Martin



Because of this traditional forced based domination training rarely works and usually only serves to abuse the animal and break its spirit, what expert horsemen have found is that patients, gentleness and natural horsemanship is the only sure fire way to "join up" with a wild horse. Building a relationship that teaches leadership and channels all the skills a wild horse has to make it into a useful and well adjusted and adapted Mustang in a domestic environment is the best way. Trust and focus are the only way this can be accomplished.

However, Carmel the beautiful sorrel pinto, has a disconnect when it comes to focus that makes him undependable. I wonder how this would play out in a wild sense to have a horse with this problem, almost like an equine autism or asbergers. I say asbergers because he does seem to understand and learn.  From what I understand according to Alder Hill's Head Horseman, Scott Litherland, Carmel just doesn't seem to be able to have that ability to connect with the  humans. He seems totally unable through chemical make up to focus on how his actions affect anyone other than himself or how they put him or others in danger, for that matter.

I have picked up little bits of information here and there on aspergers and autism through reading and knowing children and at least one adult with the condition. Believe me, its something that is either caused through environment or something intrinsically born into the person.  Sensory perception such as feel, taste, hearing sight is so heightened that they avoid everything that causes them pain from the experience. The moms I have known, with children with more extreme forms of the condition, are frustrated and at a loss because they want to hug and love their children, they want to bond with them, cuddle them. A child with the condition can't or is so far removed from the concept of human contact and connection that they live almost in an invisible bubble.



"Close up of Carmel"
Photo courtesy Scott Litherland via
Alder Hill Farm Rescue

 In the case of a wild horse the survival of such a horse in the wild might be iffy at best unless the family  made concessions to the condition to assure the young horse survived. In a predator based Herd Management Area this might be iffy especially since any person or animal with the condition would be prone to  repetitive obsessive behavior that would make them unaware of their surroundings. That for a wild animal would practically assure their untimely demise. In the case of a herd, thought there is one thing in the favor of the possibly autistic horse and that is structure. Horses tend to do the same things each day at the same time unless a threat causes them vary their activities. Even seasonal changes and herd migration would allow the autistic horse enough stability to adjust over time because of the comfort of the repetition.

Which brings me to another important fact regarding horses with autism. Because not enough work has been funded for observing and documenting horses in the wild we don't know much about how they survive and how they deal with these issues as they arise. We don't know what happens to cause a foal to become a failure to thrive yearling like Sparrow in one of my previous posts.

The bad thing about it, as I was doing research on equine autism for this challenge drawing, I came across some horrendous stereotypes and ignorance regarding horses in general and conditions like autism.  Most horsemen attribute behavior like Carmel's to Orphan Foal syndrome.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is such a thing in as Orphan Foal syndrome but I don't think that it is the same thing as autism. Yet autistic behavior is often attributed to Orphan Foal syndrome among domestic horses that have no ability to connect with humans or have no social skills in a herd situation. Orphan Foal syndrome is usually caused by isolating a newborn horse and only interacting to feed it. Its a horrid form of abuse that never lets the animal develop social skills or  and usually causes the animal physically difficulties because it is usually neglected in every way. There is hope for horses with Orphan Foal syndrome, however, it takes love and patience and a lot of kindness. The person handling the animal with Orphan Foal syndrome is basically charged with the task of showing the animal how to be a horse. Something it should have learned from a baby from its mother and from interaction with other horses. Then it can be conditioned and repurposed to be useful. In the case of Carmel he was an adult horse that was still with his mother.
 I found this difinition of asperger's syndrome when researching on the web from the site http://www.aspergers.com/ :

Detail of Carmel Drawing

"Asperger's Disorder is a milder variant of Autistic Disorder.   Both Asperger's Disorder and Autistic Disorder are in fact subgroups of a larger diagnostic category.  This larger category is called either Autistic Spectrum Disorders, mostly in European countries, or Pervasive Developmental Disorders ("PDD"), in the United States.  In Asperger's Disorder, affected individuals are characterized by social isolation and eccentric behavior in childhood. There are impairments in two-sided social interaction and non-verbal communication. Though grammatical, their speech may sound peculiar due to abnormalities of inflection and a repetitive pattern. Clumsiness may be prominent both in their articulation and gross motor behavior. They usually have a circumscribed area of interest which usually leaves no space for more age appropriate, common interests. Some examples are cars, trains, French Literature, door knobs, hinges, cappucino, meteorology, astronomy or history.  The name "Asperger" comes from Hans Asperger, an Austrian physician who first described the syndrome in 1944.  An excellent translation of Dr. Asperger's original paper is provided by Dr. Uta Frith in her Autism and Asperger Syndrome."

As you can see Autism is a completely different from Orpan Foal syndrome inspite of the simularities in results.  Autism causes the foal to isolate its self and focus on its own repetitive behavior. In Orphan Foal syndrome the foal is forced into unatural isolation by a human, causeing it to be unable to socialize, learn and develop.  A horse with Autism might be given all the love and patience but will always have limited ability to function and be useful in the way an average rightly wired horse does. A horse like this can successfully live out his life in sanctuary and interact at his own level with out suffering abuse. This is the plan for Carmel through Alder Hill Farm.
.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this drawing will benifit Alder Hill Farm's Sanctuary Mustangs.  Please go to the Mustang A Day Challenge Store on Etsy to see more Original Art Available for Sale. http://etsy.com/shop/MustangADayChallenge

Alder Hill Farm's Rosie Mustang A Day Challenge #13

note: Alder Hill Farm is no longer an active rescue. A portion of the sale of remaining paintings and prints of AFH will be used continue the MADC wild horse project.

"Rosie"
Alder Hill Farm Rescue Mustang
5 by 7 inches
Acrylic on Gessoed Matte Board
by Linda L Martin

"Rose"
Refrence photography used by permission
Alder Hill Farm Rescue

About the Christmas Fund Raising paintings:

Each of these original paintings is of a unique Mustang that has been rescued at some time after its gather from the range at a Herd Management area in the west. All of these Alder Hill horses had been through the adoption process but then circumstances changed and they were either abandoned, sent to horse sales or  other wise surrendered to trainer Scott Litherland or Alder Hill Rescue.

Each of these original paintings is 5 by 7 inches in size and painted in acrylic on gessoed matte board, then signed by the artist.

100% of the proceeds( after expenses) of these 7 paintings leading up to Christmas break will be donated to Alder Hill for the care and feeding of the  Horses.

The paintings will be offered on Etsy Starting on Monday December 20th as they are painted.  They will be offered for $45 dollars each plus Shipping and handling. $10 will go to the Mustang A Day Challenge Project for fees and materials  used in the project and the remaining $35 will go directly to Alder Hill Farm once the once payment has cleared.