Stubborn mules attend unique school in L.A.

Stubborn as a mule? Not after attending unique mule school in L.A.
at 13:32 on September 8, 2005, EST.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Sugar the mule was anything but sweet. She bit her owner, kicked him and dragged him around his corral.

"At first I could do things with her, but she slowly turned on me," said Will Green, a 43-year-old warehouseman, who bought Sugar and a nearly one hectare Mojave desert spread to lead a life of packing and hunting.

"It's these animals; they're very smart. When you don't know, it gives them a window of opportunity to take over."

This summer, Green hauled the cranky creature to what is believed to be the only mule school in the United States at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, a Los Angeles suburb.

Within a few hours, mule charmer Steve Edwards had Sugar behaving like a lamb, obediently waltzing around a dusty corral on a length of rope.

"The biggest problem with mules is that most people aren't smart enough to be around them," said Edwards, 56, an old-time cowboy who calls people "pardner" and wears a big-brimmed hat. "People say they're stubborn, but they're just very smart. You have to be able to outthink them."

The Arizona-based Edwards is the point man for the mule training program that Pierce College launched in 2002 to promote its sagging equestrian program.

The class quickly became popular with baby boomers and active retirees enamoured with the Old West and eager to explore rugged back country. More than 100 people from all over the country have taken the weeklong classes at the school's Equestrian Education Center.

Edwards teaches basic mule packing, treatment of injuries and disease and how to communicate as one with the long-eared equines whose hard work is chronicled in the Bible and in history books.

"What a lot of them find is they've bought a mule and it's supposed to be trained, so they climb on, and now they're not able to get it to do what they want it to do," Edwards said. "The problem is generally not with the mule, it's with the rider."

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