Thor: The Cowardly Mustang

Thor is a six-year-old silver dun Mustang gelding.  He was another horse who I didn't think we needed but he showed us that we did.  More specifically, I did.  When we met him we had no idea that he would become such a special family member to us.  His owner at the time was the daughter of a woman my dad had trained a few horses for.  The woman was pleased with the result and recommended her daughter to us.  That's how we met Thor, named Gus back then.  The first time my dad and brother saw him, Thor went at them.  When that didn't work, he jumped the fence and took off.  To this day no one is really sure how they managed to get him in the trailer but somehow, he ended up at our place.  When I first met him he was alone in the pens and ready to take on the world.  Pawnee had taken one look at him and decided that he was not welcome within the herd.  Whether it was because Thor was another male or because Pawnee could see how unbalanced this horse was, I will never know.  For his safety, Thor had been seperated.

The first step in gaining Thor's trust was achieving join up with him.  He responded immediatly and within several weeks he was a different horse.  He was nervous and very scared, leading us to believe he'd had a troubled past, but he was also dying for attention and a good grooming.  Several people who knew us and knew him didn't think he could be trained.  They didn't think he was worth it and they focused only on his aggression.  My dad actually lost a friend over that.  The man did not believe that Thor could ever be safetly ridden and when my dad insisted on trying anyway, the man stopped having anything to do with us.  Like many horses, Thor soon proved them all wrong.  Being ridden gave him the confidence he needed and soon the aggression disappeared.  He was reintroduced into the herd and while he and Pawnee will never be close, they've developed a sort of truce.  Thor soon became a favourite of my father's to ride and was a permanet fixture on our trail rides.  I was comfortable with Thor on the ground, and although he rarely misbehaved in the saddle, I was too afraid to ride him.  I sat on him once and had my brother lead him but that was as much as I could handle.  Then one day, while my dad was riding him, we got the call that his owners were on the way to pick him up.  They brought him home that day, pleased with his training, and it always upset me that I never got to say goodbye.

Months later, on my dad's birthday, we got a call from his owner's.  They had been happy with Thor's training and how he behaved, but the owner's boyfriend had fallen off of him and they were afraid to continue riding him.  They'd come to the conclusion that he wasn't the horse for them and instead of selling him and taking the chance that he ended up at a bad home or at the slaughter house, they wanted to give him to us.  We accepted and in a few weeks he came home for good.  Along with him we recieved the story of his past.  He had  previously been sent to another horse trainer.  Unfortunantly we know of this man and his practices with horses.  As part of his "training" Thor had been tied down so that he couldn't get up and then beaten.  This was repeated everytime he misbehaved.  Thor returned to us a little shyer than he had been when he'd left us but no worse for wear.  He remembered his manners and seemed to enjoy being ridden again.  He and Pawnee grudgingly accepted each other and he settled back into the herd.  My dad and brother continued riding him while I kept to Socks and Pawnee.

Thor improved drastically and then came the fateful day.  Socks moved down to a stable closer to me, meaning that I had lost out on having a main riding horse at my dad's.  Pawnee was usually ridden by Sommer so he wasn't an option for me.  There weren't many options, Sadie and Seven are owned by my sister and brother respectively, and Jimmy had come down along with Socks.  That left Thor, Fonda or June, Thor being the one that we own.  I chose to ride him over the other two and I remember asking him to take care of me that first day.  He did.  He didn't misbehave once.  My greatest fault as a rider is probably my fear to ride horses besides Socks and Pawnee.  Thor is the one who fixed me of that. 

Thor is as different from Socks as you can get.  He spooks very easily and still isn't quite sure if he's allowed to run or not.  He's a tank, he will walk through and over any obstacle without flinching.  He's more sensitive and alert than the other horses, something I attribute to his mustang blood.  He's shy, he always hangs back behind the other horses and is always the last to eat.  He's always noticed for his colour and admired for his breed, but most people are put off by his shy personality.  He helped teach me that I'm a better rider than I give myself credit for and that to gain more experience I need to push myself past my comfort zone.  He has about twice as much mane as a normal horse and I keep promising myself that I will one day do the impossible and untangle all of it.  And the best part is, often when we ride Thor down the highway, the man who stopped talking to my dad simply because we wanted to give Thor a chance, will drive by and see Thor trotting calmly down the side of the highway, oblivious to the traffic and commotion going on around him.  He will always slow down to look and then, as if he realizes what he's doing, speed up and then speed away.  He still will not talk to us.


Thor is a special horse.  He is not and probably never will be bomb-proof.  Considering the abuse he suffered in the past, he's gotten over it extremely well.  He is still very nervous about ropes and whips, but he trusts us enough to let us do whatever we want with him.  He does spook but when it comes down to it he will be reliable.  He didn't spook once on his first trip in the mountains and acted like he'd been doing it for years.  My dad is convinced he wants to sell him, and although Alex and I go along with it for now, we know we'd never let my dad sell him.   He was given to us so he'd have a good home and we know he'll always have one with us.

Sorry for so many random posts, I have a few I've had typed up for months and would just like to get posted.  Plus I'd like to have a little more on my other horses since I never talk about them.