What do you folks think about the Mustang training incentive program?

The idea is to get the horses trained and adopted quickly. Nobody is going to pay $700+ for a mustang with 30 days training. In this economy you can barely sell good broke Quarter horses for that much. But they need to get the horses adopted, and the only way to do that is to get them trained. I don't see why it should matter to the trainer how much the horse is sold or adopted for- they are getting paid for their work, their job is to train the horse. They do their job, they get paid. The better they do, the better the pay. The $125 fee per horse goes back into the program funds so they can continue to do what they do.

I think it's a fantastic program. So many people fall in love w/ the romantic idea of taming and owning a wild mustang. Then they find out that they are way in over their head. This program is great incentive for anyone to buy a mustang and have them trained for their new owners rather than shipped off to the slaughter house because the person who bought handle their new horse and can't afford a real trainer. If I had more experience I'd love to participate in this program.

I agree in theory it is fantastic. In practice I have some problems with it. Like Arby said how do you define the "trainers" who are approved to do this? In my opinion the BLM does a very poor job of approving homes and feed lot caretakers of the mustangs. I don't have any confidence they'll do a good job approving trainers. I know of people who are approved homes and after not being able to do anything with their mustang they've sold it at auction with a strong possibility it could go for meat. Those people are still approved to get more mustangs. This is an example of a home the BLM approved: http://www.gentlehorses.com/starved-horses.htm Do I believe they'll do any better with trainers? I don't. Instead you'll get "trainers" realizing what a cash cow this will be. They'll get paid $680 for "training" the horse and then have a buddy buy the horse for the $125. That person will turn around and sell the horse for whatever he could get and they split the profit. Since the BLM doesn't really keep track of the horses post adoption people would see this as easy money. There may also be a liability problem. These approved trainers will use that as a selling point. Purchase my horses as I am a government approved trainer. The common person would believe that means the person is skilled and reliable when they could be turning out dangerous horses to make a quick buck. I understand you wanted to save mustangs. I hate what is being done to them now and how bad the homes are that many mustangs end up in. I think your plan could work if people were honest, but there are so many road apples mixed in with the good apples when it comes to horses. Every idea gets us closer to a solution so keep thinking. I think if you could combine getting big name trainers whose rep would be tarnished by turning out crap horses combined with them getting large tax breaks as their valuable training time could be listed as a donation. The other advantage with using a tax break is that it will only be valuable to people who are already making money on their horse business. A trainer breaking even or losing money won't make any money on a tax break as they won't have much taxable income. A trainer with a profitable place could get a hefty tax break. Of course this has holes too because good trainers aren't always profitable and bad trainers can be.

How do they screen for "approved trainers?" Any idiot waving a stick can pass themselves off as a "trainer" so I would be wary of the approval process. It would be horrific to find these animals being sent to some abuse happy moron who sees nothing but dollar signs in the wide eyes of his/her fearful horses. Why do they just not give them away? Because people who can't afford $125 per horse cannot afford to take care of a Breyer horse. Putting the cheap deterrent on there will help recoup some of the astronomical expense that's put into the round up and maintenance of the animals who don't see, as well as vaccinations and sterilization experiments they're doing on these horses. Giving them away will attract an undesirable crowd, especially potential kill buyers or more backyard breeders that already exploit the public.