Cheerful Eagle Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 Hi all! My Junior troop is volunteering at a Horse rescue ranch in Northern Phoenix this spring as part of our Bronze Award service project. I'd like to develope a badge (scouters - think webelos-level type requirements) that empasizes the part of the mustang in the history of the southwest. Any ideas? links? resoueces? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CalicoPenn Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 The Bureau of Land Management, an agency in the US Dept. of the Interior, might be a good place to start. They are responsible for managing wild Mustangs under the Wild Free-roaming Horse & Burro Act of 1971. I don't know what resources they have but they may have some educational materials and activities available. Calico Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epalmer84 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 The Wikipedia article looks like a pretty good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang_%28horse%29 It has a lot of references that seem to be quite relevant. Ed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purpledragon Posted February 14, 2008 Share Posted February 14, 2008 Hi Cheerful Eagle, Are you going to be doing a troop badge or a council's own badge? I was just wondering. My troop will be working on a council's own JR badge next week. We were advised by the council to look for patch programs that related to the badge the girls wanted to do. We will be going over these at tomorrow night's meeting and we will have a guest speaker attend next weeks meeting when we will work on the badge. It sounds like fun. The only things so far was the quest speaker. She wanted to do the badge for the girls and tell them what they should include. I had to remind her that we can give suggestions and encourage them to think in certain ways... but in the end it will be up to the girls. It should be interesting to see what they come up with. Let me know how your badge works out. It sounds fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheerful Eagle Posted February 14, 2008 Author Share Posted February 14, 2008 Oh yeah, include the scouts. Hee hee. Sometimes I get so carried away with dreaming I forget to include in the scouts. (Baaaaad scout leader! 50 laps around the coffee pot!) I did follow some of the links yesterday and foound some interesting sites: http://www.frankhopkins.com/horsesense1.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang_%28horse%29 http://netnebraska.org/extras/wildhorses/ Keep me honest about involving the girls in devloping THEIR badge. We enjoyed ourselves so much at the Luv Shack ranch last Saturday (http://www.luvshackranchrescue.com/mustang.html). It was our orientation session, and the ranch manager spent 5 HOURS with us!! The girls not only leaned where the muck rakes and dumpster were, they also learned how to put a halter on a horse and groom a horse BY DOING IT themselves on a horse they chose! The manager wants to help the girls earn both horse badges while they are volunteering there! WOW! I hope our troop will develope a lasting relationship with this organization. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purpledragon Posted February 14, 2008 Share Posted February 14, 2008 Excellent Cheerful Eagle, That sounds Awesome! Too bad it is located too far away for us to check it out (unless we plan it as a trip... he he I will have to bring it up with the girls. But we will have earned our Horse Badges by then I am sure.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneinMpls Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 Oh for cool You might take a look at the "Get With the Land" program. http://www.girlscouts.org/program/gs_central/insignia/online/participation_patches/getwithland/ is the link to it. BLM fits right in there. You're already earning Horse Fan, Horse Rider, and for the ones who are bridging, possibly the Horse Sense IPA, right? All of these have a horse breed activity. Blue skies! Anne in Mpls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneinMpls Posted March 2, 2008 Share Posted March 2, 2008 Hi again Cheerful Eagle! I visited the horse rescue in our area today - council said I needed to do a walk-through myself before bringing the troop, and they are also requesting that they fax their cert. of liability insurance to them. Just curious - did your council request this too? I hate it when council puts me in the position of being a pain in the neck. I mean, I get where they're coming from, but we won't be riding, and we should be covered by GSUSA's insurance anyway. Just a little frustrating. Especially when the horse rescue says they've had Girl Scouts volunteer before and they didn't have to do all this stuff...drat. I'm trying to put it in terms of, if we do this stuff that council is asking for, we'll be able to leverage more volunteers etc. Peace! Anne in Mpls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneinMpls Posted March 2, 2008 Share Posted March 2, 2008 Hi again Cheerful Eagle! I visited the horse rescue in our area today - council said I needed to do a walk-through myself before bringing the troop, and they are also requesting that they fax their cert. of liability insurance to them. Just curious - did your council request this too? I hate it when council puts me in the position of being a pain in the neck. I mean, I get where they're coming from, but we won't be riding, and we should be covered by GSUSA's insurance anyway. Just a little frustrating. Especially when the horse rescue says they've had Girl Scouts volunteer before and they didn't have to do all this stuff...drat. I'm trying to put it in terms of, if we do this stuff that council is asking for, we'll be able to leverage more volunteers etc. Peace! Anne in Mpls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheerful Eagle Posted March 2, 2008 Author Share Posted March 2, 2008 ummmm... council? Well, I just assumed that the standard "saftey-wise" rules applied. I filed our trip thingy, had all parents sign event permission slips, made sure we had enough adults, and all the standard stuff. I was pretty sure I had crossed all my t's and dotted all my i's, so to speak. Did I miss a step? BTW, we went out again yesterday. Scooped poop and groomed 8 horses. It is so cool watching these little girls (don't tell anyone I called them "little" ) start to get confident about handeling large animals. A few girls were rather apprehensive at the start! They are even learning how to clean the hooves, and getting the hang of being the boss of a horse. The cool thing is that the horses demand that the girl be assertive. If she's not definite and clear about what she wants, the horse just starts taking over. Kind of comical actually... We have a ratio of 4 adults to 7 scouts, so we can keep a close eye on how the girls are interacting with the horses. Next month we are going to be working on the horse badges with the ranch manager (she was out of town yesterday). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneinMpls Posted March 2, 2008 Share Posted March 2, 2008 Yha, I think this just might be a case of once again our council gets in the way of actually playing the game of Scouting. *If* we only did it as a day trip, I wouldn't need to file anything at all. But, we're making it an overnight in order to use up some soon to expire cookie credits and therefore need to file with council. I think we'll just submit the overnight paperwork without the horse rescue visit, cause we're also planning a cave tour in the area that same weekend. Anne grumbling in Minneapolis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purpledragon Posted March 3, 2008 Share Posted March 3, 2008 AnneinMpls & Cheereful eagle, Sorry about the late response, I have been going crazy with the cookie booths this weekend. When we went to ride and do our horse badges we only went for a few hours during the day. We needed to have the facility fax their proof of insurance as well. They had to carry a million dollar policy. Council needed this to be able to add the horse ranch to their list of approved places for Girl Scouts to visit. Something about the GS insurance, if we go to a non approved place and something happens they will not cover anything. SO that is the mystery about the insurance stuff. As for the walk through, yeah that is part of safety wise. But when I talked to council about the facility now being approved (because I helped them to be ), that it seems that all of the required items for safety wise (the walk through, the medical stuff and all) should have been verified by council in order to have the site approved. I love to place that level of responsibility back in their court. He he. So all I needed to do was to follow the rules about the girls riding with the proper boots and all of that stuff. Anyways, I hope this helps to clear up why they need the insurance info. (Well at least why they do it that way here in our area.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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