This HORSE was sold 4 times in a year! 😳 Can he be fixed?

[Music] I always keep my eye open at auctions for horses that need a little help at one particular sale I saw a super cute little mule Pony I had a friend I knew would be really interested in her so of course I snatched her up for a few hundred she was definitely worth taking a chance on I knew this little girl was going to be a handful so her new owner brought a seasoned pony horse to help get this little girl halter broke in only a couple of days after a little bit of refinement this girl was ready to head out to her new home at that same sale I spied a horse I had seen months earlier selling in the catalog after his quarantine he became best friends with little Stewie I was able to talk to the owners that had dropped this horse off loose at the sale they were actually not the people that had bought him from the catalog months before so this horse had been passed around quite a bit it did not take me very long to figure out why this guy was having a hard time staying in one home I really like to give my new horses the benefit of the doubt so I just proceeded to try and figure out what was going on with this guy he was really wound up and frantic before I decided to to ride this horse I figured I might as well check to see that the steering worked and that he would stop when asked I really like ground driving horses and this guy picked up on it relatively quickly he was actually much better for this than he was for a regular lunging I was feeling pretty confident with my $800 purchase at this point he was cute as a button and he would fit in perfectly with the rest of my small little brown cow ponies that I was collecting but after a while it became apparent that he was going to need more than a [Music] tuneup every time I went to work this horse he would buck and buck and buck I tried multiple different Saddles that all fit him quite well I had a chiropractor come out and check his back I also had an osteopath come out and adjust him he had a little bit of a sore back but other than that we couldn't find a reason for all of his bucking I looked at the original ad that was placed in the catalog when he sold a year ago and they said he was a wonderful horse that saddled up the same every single day which I guess was true because he would in fact Buck every single day the easiest way for me to figure out how this guy rides around was was to actually crawl up on him myself so I popped my brain bucket on and I took him for a spin bear back he had some really weird reactions his ears were pinned for the entire ride he also had no idea what to think of all of the petting that I was doing on him he was constantly reaching around and actually biting my legs after this short little test ride it was pretty apparent that this guy was suffering from some severe pain he was very sensitive when I put my legs on him and extremely reluctant to move forward at the end of the ride I decided that I was just going to go ahead and treat him pretty aggressively for ulcers he had a lot of signs that were textbook for this condition he was a little bit of an Impulse by that I just ended up getting to keep that mule company in the trailer so I didn't really have any plans for him at the moment there was no real reason for me to continue riding him if he was in so much pain and so angry it seemed like he had had a really rough last couple of months in the end I decided that it would be fine if he had an entire year off to kind of reset he got to hang out with the other horses in the herd and while he did seem like he was calming down I did observe a bunch of odd behaviors from him he would spend hours out in the pasture playing with different items I saw him play with the haets the most often and at first I thought it was pretty cute but then I realized that he would do this for hours and hours on the end it was very similar to how zoo animals find something and repetitively play with it when they're bored anxious or stressed the other horses really had no no idea what he was doing it honestly kind of freaked them out if you only saw a few seconds of it you would think that he was just playing but he would do this every single day day after day just to try and calm his nerves I bought him some other toys to try and pacify his busy mind but as the months went on he continued to do this while the other horses were eating their dinner he would stand in a corner and twirl his hayet around at this point I had owned him for around 6 months he had gotten ulcer treatment for around three of those months he also was extremely aggressive around food over the winter I continued to work with him bit by bit while I couldn't afford the amount of body work that he needed I decided to learn how to do it myself with this new knowledge I could take care of his needs on a daily basis and hopefully make him better faster and around a year after I had first purchased this horse he finally started to relax when the time came for me to saddle him up again I thought he was well prepared he no longer had a sore back all of his muscles were nice and loose he had stopped reaching around and biting me when I sat battled him but his first day back he continued to Buck pretty seriously in an instant he reverted back to the horse I knew a year ago he was anxious and tense and he just could not find it in himself to stop bucking once he started bucking it was like his brain was in a totally different place all of the improvements we had made over the last year kind of disappeared I remember pretty vividly how upset I was this day it just so happened that a storm rolled in so I took him into the barn and let him stand tied for about 20 minutes when the storm subsided I decided to take him back out I was really racking my brain while we were waiting for the storm to go out it seemed like the time he had spent standing in the barn allowed him to realize that just because I put a saddle on him did not mean that I was going to treat him like the people before sometimes people called these horses cold backed horses they need time to warm up in order to settle down but I think what Gus had been experiencing was a totally different thing before the storm his brain was completely shut down and after the storm he was much more open-minded and willing I felt like he was much more in tune with what I was asking him he also did not seem fearful anxious or stressed I went back in and all of the things that he used to get upset about with the saddle he didn't seem to mind I had a feeling since he had been bounced around so many times that he had never really gotten a fair shake so I decided to go back to the beginning with this guy it was really important for me to establish that anything I ask of him was never going to in him harm or pain given the extent of his ulcer problems and the amount of stress that he was feeling the first couple months he was with me this was a huge step despite how serious he was about bucking I never really felt unsafe around him while I continued through his training I did a lot of things at Liberty including getting on and off of him as long as I kept his fear anxiety and stress low he accepted the training quite well as I started to chug along with the horse I was now calling Little Gus I had received an update on this super cute little mule that had been purchased at the same sale she had started her training as the cutest little pack mule as I moved through little Gus's training he became best friends with Pete and Big Gus every time I had a free minute I would chip away at Gus's training since he could be kind of a volatile little horse I kept everything pretty lowkey he had to understand that he was allowed to relax his time being ridden didn't have to be a stressful situation due to his previous handling he did have a pretty big aversion to all types of bits since I restarted him he really had a keen understanding of all of the cues so I had no trouble riding him in a halter even when it was time for me to start loping this guy around I decided to just ride him in a halter with one lead on it this was something that I was a little bit nervous about he was so athletic with his bucking just on the lunge line that the thought of me getting catapulted off of him was pretty intense at the beginning but since he now had a pretty pretty strong Foundation I felt fine asking him to lope off with just a halter and Lead rope on just like any other green horse or young Colt I allowed him to go forward and move freely he was even pretty good about slowing down just off of my seat as well I think Little Gus probably has a story a lot similar to many auction horses his original owner took him to the sale when he was picked up by a horse trader the trader took him to another sale where he was sold under false pretenses the new owner couldn't handle him so he was sold again that owner also could not handle him So eventually he was taken to be sold loose I was little Gus's fifth owner in just over a year and if you've been watching my channel for a while you know that Gus does have a particularly mischievous personality but it is really hard for me to get angry with him when he does stuff like this because the horse that I brought home from the sale was a completely different animal I hope this video gave you guys a better idea of why I keep some of these horses so long and why sometimes I have a hard time letting them go and in case you're wondering that super cute little mule from the beginning is a mountain climbing packing machine now thank you guys so much for watching and stay tuned for the next video

Channel: The Clever Cowgirl

Views: 81,248

Keywords:

Id: dtAYQEHgUc8

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 13 2024