Week 4

So, since my last post a pretty fair amount of stuff has gone on! I finished & emailed my history essay which I am glad to have done, and I went riding twice, once with just my Aunt Vicki on a trail through some hills and another time with Vicki, Kimber, and two friends in an arena. It was fun to be back on horses again! Since I was the one taking the all pictures I currently have in my possession, I don't have any of me actually riding yet, but once I get some I'll put them up. The picture to the left is one of my friends on Murphy and my Aunt on Shelby, her mustang.

I also made a video of me with JJ and Shelby to send to one of my pen pals when I went riding with Vicki. In the next few days, I have to start my research/outline for the current issue essay and find a pen pal back in Nashville. So there's lots I've done and lots to do, and that's all for right now!

What's new?

<- Shelby!

I am currently on vacation in California to visit my friends & family out here. On Thursday I wrote a pretty good rough draft for my history essay, and I'll be finishing it handing it in sometime this week. There seems to be so much history having to do with mustangs and horses, but it's sometimes difficult to know if a particular fact has more to do with mustangs or horses and if I should put it into the essay. Wild mustangs are basically horses or descendants of horses that were released by or escaped from people who probably tamed them. So is it relevant what battles or journeys tame horses were involved with if those horses' descendants are mustangs? I hope so, because I'm putting those sorts of things in my essays.

Friday I got to visit my Aunt's mustang, Shelby! I didn't ride him then because there wasn't that much time, but we did feed him and let him run around in a pen for a while. He's about six years old, and he is so gorgeous. He's pretty big, too. Most mustangs are supposed to be short and small (about 14 hands, which means about 56 inches), but Shelby is over 15 hands. It was fun to go see him.

On another note, about a week ago there was a BLM mustang roundup that may have caused the death of 13 of the horses. The horses died from dehydration, or had to be put down because of other illnesses. One horse had to be put down because he broke a leg because of the round up. The BLM says their deaths have more to do with the drought, but animal rights advocates say their deaths had more to do with the round-up. I think it was probably a combination of the two. But of course, had they not done the round up and if they don't continue then more horses could die of dehydration in the wild. It's a tricky situation. I think this issue will probably be my subject for my current issue essay. It's interesting, I'd like to research it more, regardless of whether or not it will be the focus of my essay.

That's all for now!

Scratching the surface

As of a few days ago, I've started my research on the history of the American mustang. As it turns out, they have a pretty extensive history. As the title of this entry would suggest, I'm just now scratching the surface. Basically I've learned that mustangs originate from horses brought over by conquistadors in the late 1400's. They were spread north and east from Mexico and what are now the bordering US states of Mexico by the Native Americans. Once more Europeans started arriving in America, they also brought horses and some of those horses were released into the wild which obviously increased the wild mustang population. Until the mid-1900's, people would just release their horses into the wild, and mustangs could be brutally captured and then sold for horse meat or other purposes. Many people became enraged about the treatment of these horses, so in 1971 the US congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burro Act, which gave the responsibility of managing wild horses and burros and the land they roam on to the BLM (Bureau of Land Management). As far as history goes, that's an overview of what I've learned so far.

In looking for information about the history of the mustang, I also came across lots of current information. I learned part of what the BLM does is keep track of the carrying capacity of the land mustangs are on and when their population exceeds that the BLM goes and and captures mustangs to sell them or put them up for adoption. I learned the mustangs can double their herd size in just 4 years. I also learned that there are almost 37,000 mustangs roaming across 10 states, and that Nevada alone holds almost 18,000 of those horses.

I'm researching these topics so I can write my essay on the history of the American Mustang and then so I can write one on a current issue they are facing.

Here are the sources I found all this information at-

www.nationalwildhorseadoptionday.org/

www.blm.gov

the DK Horse Encyclopedia

My first post!

Today is the day I start my blog. This is actually my first blog I've ever set up, so this is all new. So far, I've basically just been getting everything organized and started. It just occurred to me not everyone reading this actually knows much about what I'm going to be doing! The first link posted below leads to my job description, basically, and the other link leads to the Mustang Heritage home page.

http://www.mustangheritagefoundation.org/forms/yep_opportunities.pdf

http://www.mustangheritagefoundation.org

So now that you have some basic idea of what I'm doing, I'll talk about what I've done thus far! First of all, I found out I got the job last Saturday, which was very exciting. I was at camp for a week, and when I got back Friday I received an email from my horse trainer pen-pal, Marie with her introduction video. yesterday (Saturday) I went out and bought a journal, and today I start on all the actual work. I've obviously already started the blog. I've also written in my journal, and I'm going to do my introductory video and taxes. I'm also going to kind of form a plan for what days I'm going to be working on what, and I'll start researching and writing essays and such tomorrow or the next day. It's all very exciting. Not too much going on in the way of actually learning anything yet. I'll try to post once I get everything set and ready to go which should definitely be less than a week for now. Okay, that's about it for today!