Author: Western Horse Watchers

What is a Wild Horse Advocate?

In The Human Side of Enterprise, Douglas McGregor argued that management style was a product of the manager’s assumptions about his workers.

Suppose you visited a company and found a top-down authoritarian structure, with close supervision and heavy emphasis on external control (punishment and rewards), you might conclude that management believes their workers are lazy and irresponsible, have little ambition and dislike work.

If you went to a business and found fewer layers of management, larger spans of control, flexible work hours and a high degree of job satisfaction and self-control, you might conclude that management believes their workers are creative, loyal, seek responsibility and voluntarily strive to meet or exceed the goals set for them.

So now you come across an individual or group that practices or promotes the poisoning of water holes, fencing-off of pastures, aerial round-ups, bait-trapping or darting of mares.

What does that tell you about their underlying beliefs?

Another organization installs fences to keep horses away from busy highways, outbids the kill buyers at auctions, places rescued animals on sanctuaries, adopts horses gathered from public lands, provides water out on the range to help keep them away from populated areas.

Who’s the advocate?

Be Good to Your Horse Always

Two things you can do to help him avoid colic:

  • Don’t lock him in a stall
  • Give him clean fresh water daily

If it’s more work for you it’s better for him.

These guys are not in a barn, they’re in a corral.  Pasture would be better.

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Water buckets can be dumped, rinsed and refilled daily.  Bleached weekly.  Mustangs play in their water on hot summer days.  Sometimes a bucket gets damaged.

Don’t get mad when your horse acts like a horse.  Keep a spare bucket in the barn.

Do you think it’s an accident they’re standing the way they are?  No, they’re keeping an eye on their surroundings, especially the photographer.  Haven’t decided if he’s friend or foe.

Give your horse choices.  If he wants to be in the rain he can be in the rain.  If he wants to be under a roof he can be under a roof.

Note the 2×6 rim board added to the pipe panels to satisfy BLM requirements.

If you adopt a mare from the BLM she might be pregnant (unless she’s been in segregated long-term holding for over a year).

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