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Show f i ,: ; K . , j ' A ' x l- : i ' -A ,- ( ' Vv4 i " . ? - Wayne Pentz and his son Wesley, 8, work with Old Trail Blazer an . nAnTm adopted stud which they are training for endurance racing. The THE HORSE IS ADOPTED adoPtedhorseisoneof23wiIdmustangswhichtheBureauofLand IIIC llUHOt IU MUUI Management allowed to be adopted after a wild horse roundup south of Tooele. By ROSELYN KIRK Wayne Pentz, East Layton is an adop-; adop-; live parent, but instead of adopting a child, Wayne has adopted a horse, one of the 23 wild Mustangs put up for adoption by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) after a wild horse roundup south j of Tooele. WAYNE said he didn't plan to adopt a horse when he went to Faust, 30 miles south of Tooele last month. His brother from Morgan planned to adopt and Wayne just went along to haul the horse home. But when everyone had drawn, some of the horses were left. Wayne took the wild Mustang no one else wanted. ( The adoption papers identify the horse i as a seven-year old dun Gelding with a blaze face, half stocking on left rear leg and ankle sock on right rear leg. Wayne I says BLM officials are wrong in only one aspect. His adopted horse is not a gelding, but a stud. The crusty scales on the Mus- , tang's rump, which made him unacceptable unaccep-table to others who were seeking to adopt the animals, resulted from his fighting with other stallions. "HE WAS so skinned up that no one else wanted him," Wayne said. But he could tell by looking at his front legs, the deep V between the front legs, the slanting shoulder, the mean eye and the Roman nose that the dun-colored animal would make a good endurance horse. In addition to being thin and scarred on the back, the wild horse also has an injury on his leg. At first when Wayne put the horse in the stable and tried to feed him grain, the Mustang didn't recognize it as food. "I got him to eat a little kernel and when he found out what it was, he was like a kid chewing bubble gum." At first the Mustang Mus-tang was skin and bones, but has started to fatten up in the four weeks since Wayne brought him home to their acreage in East Layton. ARLENE AND Wayne Pentz care for eight other horses, in addition to dogs, cats, a goat and some sheep on their property, located on Highway 193 just east of Hill Field. Arlene is the real horsewoman, Wayne says. Although Wayne has had the Mustang for over a month, he can't decide on a name. He's thought of Rebel and Crusty (for the scales on his back), Trail Blazer or Black Beauty, or Snuffy, but no decision has been made yet on the horse's name. WAYNE SAYS that most of the 23 wild Mustangs were run into the Tooele area from Wyoming, probably from an area south of Kemmerer. Most of the Mustangs are just ranch horses that got away. Since the horses aren't used much for work during haying season, some of them were turned out in the fall and never brought back in the spring. Tractors were used for farm equipment instead of horses. After about three years, the horses became wild and were driven to the Tooele area by helicopter. Although Wayne has broken many horses and is currently working with another of the Mustangs, he decided to take it slowly with the dun colored stallion, which is a "fisty horse." He had ridden the horse several times, but since the "animal was working well" he decided decid-ed to loosen the knot on the hackamore and lengthen the stirrups. "IT DIDN'T work. I rode him for 20 seconds before he dumped me. But 1 have to ride him again tonight to show him who's boss. This time I'll take up the stirrups and tighten the knot on the hackamore. "I guess I'll have to start on page one of another book. He flunked the first session so I'll have to give him another class." Ultimately Wayne hopes to train the animal so he can run in 50 to 100 mile endurance races. As a former cowboy who worked for several years on a ranch in Wyoming, Wayne said he had often ridden over 50 miles and so he decided to par- . ticipate in one of the long endurance races .held near Ogden. I THOUGHT I'll show those city dudes v -how it's done, but a rider on a pure blood Arabian ran the tar out of me." Wayne hopes that the Mustang can be trained for this kind of endurance racing and plans to try him in the races this summer. At first the Mustang would only snort and blow. It was a lot of work to get him quiet. Then the animal had to be trained with the bridle and how to rein. "This wild horse kicks like a thrashing machine," Wayne said. "When I signed for him, I thought he's a mean looking bugger. I like him. I found out he bucks like a son-of-a-gun." ALTHOUGH the people who drew for the wild horses were allowed to adopt the animals, they can't be sold and don't really belong to the people who train and feed them. Wayne paid 50 cents for the horse, but it cost about $40 for gas to transport the horse home. Then there was a $27 veterinarian bill to doctor the horse's leg and over $200 for hay and feed. Although the adoption papers specify that the adopted horses are to be cared for under humane conditions, Wayne is worried that the BLM officials won't follow up on all the horses to see that the animals are well taken care of. He predicts that only about five horses out of the 23 will be properly broken and cared (or. THE OTHER horse he is training belongs to a man in Magna who hopes to use the horse as a riding horse for children. Wayne said he doesn't think the city is any place for a horse and worries that many of the animals will end up there without proper training. He said he would like to check back on the wild Mustangs himself in two or three months to see if they are being properly cared for. TO MAKE sure that the adopted horses can be identified, each has been branded either on the neck under the mane or inside in-side the mouth with a series number that indicate the age of the horse, the sex and other information. Rather than being branded with a hot iron, the horses are marked with dry ice and alcohol. All the horses were branded before they were adopted. |