Coming from Europe, I’ve been driving horses and ponies since I could count my age on two hands. Sled races, dragging fields, cutting grass, driving just to drive because it’s fun, skidding logs, I even drove a wedding once.

I’ve never had the money for a nice horse, so I either worked my tail off to get to work with people who had nice horses and could teach me something or I had to train my own. A “nice horse” to me is sane even and especially under stress, and versatile, which includes pulling/driving at least the most basic level.

And yes, when I was a kid you got on your bicycle at 8yo to go muck stalls and do whatever it took to get to spend some time with whatever rank or plain untrained horses and ponies someone had sitting around, and worked hard to get them rideable and sometimes even driveable.

I’ve now driven horses in 4 countries on 2 different continents and I still love it. I’ve always wanted to drive a Mustang. A 4WD one that whinnies, not the other kind.

So here goes 4yo DG Petrie who does best in life when she has a job and understands it.

Petrie is available through Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy to the right home. She needs someone firm but patient with a sense of humor. She also needs consistency and a JOB.

She would like equine friends to hang out with and some space to run. She’s turned out 24/7 at over 8500ft elevation and maintains fine on a free choice forage-only diet with loose salt, EquiPride and a good mineral block. This horse is tough, has a thick coat and strong feet.

Petrie has not been ridden yet, as I felt she needed time to physically and mentally mature. She’s been ponied in the backcountry and was my pack horse on overnight trips last year. Located in Guffey, CO.

PM or email us if you also want to drive a Mustang, or are tired of hauling firewood by hand drawn sled, or carrying your camping gear or elk around on your own back. Petrie would be glad to help. Again, looking for someone to give her consistency. She is young and incredibly clever, and does great when she has something productive to focus on.

#wildhorseswillingpartners

#makingmountainmustangmemories

Removing the neck tag

This is 6yo buckskin Devil’s Garden Mustang mare Luna, dam of DG Bibi who found a home a while back.

Here we are, taking her tag off, a special “unwilding” ritual that makes me light up even after doing this dozens of times. It marks the transition from wild to handleable and on their way to becoming someone’s partner and friend. This little mare sure made me earn it.

Neck tags serve the purpose of being able to identify the horses at the holding facility. It shows the last 4 digits of a Mustang’s ID number. Some facilities now remove the tags upon adoption of the horses for their safety.

Mustangs that come to us directly from the Double Devil Wild Horse Corrals in Alturas, CA are Forest Service Mustangs and unlike their BLM-gathered cousins not branded. Not having the characteristic left neck freezemark removes a layer of protection should the horses end up in a tough spot. I d love to see the FS freezebrand their wild horses again like they did years ago.

Luna is in the process of being gentled and would like to find a home of her own with someone who appreciates and is capable of providing guidance to a strong-willed golden mare. Located in Guffey, CO. Luna is Sale Authority and available for adoption through Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy

If you’re interested in adopting her please PM us or send an email to info@wildhorseoutreach.org

Every comment, like and share helps get the word out, so please share away and let’s find this pretty little lady a great home!

Video by Tay Martin (she and Cedar provided good entertainment throughout this process)

Training halter & lead rope: Rowdy’s Ropes

Jacket and vest: Outback Trading Company LTD.

Hat: Montana Rio Buckaroo Hats

#wildhorseswillingpartners #makingmountainmustangmemories 

Neck rope prep with an unhandled Mustang

In training horses, preparation is key. Meaning that before we do something, we need to get ready to do it. Get our equipment/body/mind in the right place.

What’s just as important, and unfortunately sometimes overlooked, is that we need to prepare the horse for what’s coming too.

When it comes to unhandled Mustangs, people tend to want to get hands, ropes, halters, what have you on that horse ASAP.

And then what? “I don’t know.” That’s not a plan, that’s a crap shoot.

People somehow get a halter on a horse and then can’t get close to the horse to take it back off, sometimes for months. Same with ropes.

Now you have a terrified animal getting caught on or chased by the rope and no earthly idea how to help them. Or one that’s in a halter that’s too tight or too loose but too panicked to let you near them.

At the same time, in some cases waiting until the horse lets you walk up is not realistic and we tend to teach them to avoid us in the process of trying to initiate touch. So sometimes using a neck rope is necessary and, if done properly, very helpful.

We suggest that people don’t put anything new or potentially scary on the horse without a solid plan for how to remove it even if something goes sideways, and a safe, enclosed area to work in.

Here’s DG Rafiki, 9yo untouched and pretty spirited- whom I hadn’t to touched or been within 4ft of at the time – getting used to ropes touching him and the (slightly droopy from months of use) lunge whip rubbing his face and neck.

I’m also helping him learn to stay present and relax through it all through how I time the breaks I give him.

This prepares him for when I put the neck rope on AND use my hook on a stick to remove it because I’m not expecting to to get close enough or for him to be comfortable enough for me to take it off by hand the first time or 3.

Rafiki will be available for adoption through Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy once gentled. Please reach out via PM or email if interested. He is SA. Located in Guffey, CO.

We also offer guidance for adopters and gentle Mustangs for clients.

Please always train with the end in mind and have a plan. For your Mustang’s sake and your own safety.

#wildhorseswillingpartners

#makingmountainmustangmemories

We introduced Project Littlefoot some weeks back in memory of DG Littlefoot, the coolest, friendliest and most easy-going young wildie there ever was. He was the first Devil’s Garden (DG) wild horse to join our herd. He carried the BLM freezebrand, one of the few DGs that did. He should have easily had another 20 years of trail adventures. Sadly that wasn’t meant to be.

In his honor we’re continuing to help Sale Authority DG Mustangs find their feet in our world by adopting, gentling, and placing them into wonderful, suitable homes. We currently have 6 we’re working on gentling and finding homes for, while a 7th (DG Simba) is pending adoption. DG Cedar will stay with Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy for the foreseeable future.

To help us cover costs for their care and training, we created a fundraiser and raised over $3,000. Last picture is our IG fundraiser alone. Thank you to all who donated, purchased key chains and apparel. We’re blown away by and so grateful for your support. Thank you!

I’d like to thank our team, especially Tay Martin and Linnea Helander , for putting up with me and the craziness that is caring for, gentling and taking great photos of wild horses of all ages, shapes and sizes year-round at 8,700ft elevation.

About these pictures: Simba looks lovely after Linnea and I brushed him for 1 1/2h. If I look tired and muddy, here’s why…

It’s been raining almost daily for a month, the wettest spring I’ve seen by far. Soggy pens, horses, humans, questionable footing for working horses, missed training days and cancelled clinics, which means losing $ we need to help Mustangs and slower progress for the wild ones. I love being out there doing what we do and this past month has been wearing on me.

My freeze response game is strong and when I’m stressed enough, I get quiet. If I’m not posting or replying to emails quickly, please know that it’s not personal and I do care.

They say friends are people who know you and like you anyway. I’m grateful to our team, clients, adopters, followers and supporters for accepting me as the entirely imperfect human I am.

For info on available horses and how to support us, see below:

List of available horses through us: https://wildhorseoutreach.org/index.php/available-mustangs/
MustangMatch: https://wildhorseoutreach.org/…/mustang_match_available/

This is another one of those “get a Mustang, they said…” stories that are funny and have a lesson hiding in them after the fact but give you ulcers and grey hair throughout their unfolding.

Remember a couple of posts ago when I introduced MustangMatch, a platform for people to list and find Mustangs of all levels of training available for sale or adoption? If you’ve missed it, here’s the link again: https://wildhorseoutreach.org/index.php/mustang-match/

Anyhow, one of the horses on there is Levi, a 9yo Onaqui, UT Mustang gelding, owned by a friend of mine who is moving and therefore rehoming her boy. He’s actually the reason we became friends. Levi, then Napoleon, was a TIP horse I gentled years back. Kait saw him on Facebook and fell in love with his big personality. We’d named him after the tiny emperor for good reason

Kait decided to leave Levi with Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy so we can find him a good home. He is easy to handle on the ground, as safe as they come under saddle and a fun ride.

I put him in a pen, took him on a couple of rides, turned him out and caught him again the next day just to make sure I could, rode him bareback up the side of a mountain and back down on a stormy evening, and decided to turn him out with the herd for the time being so he could have companionship while he waits for his new person to find him.

Well.

He knows our Ambassador horses, he’s met them all. So I didn’t think much of it when I took him out to summer pasture, 250ac of grassy meadows, steep slopes and lots and lots of trees. I figured he’d go find them and hang out with them – because horses are herd animals, right? – and I’ve put many a new horse in with them over the years.

Wrong.

Levi got out there Thursday morning, reportedly did his own thing until afternoon and then vanished. Poof. No joining the others, no hanging out near the barn or the water source, no grazing in in the valley in plain sight. Nope, gone.

Friday afternoon I rode out after him on Blanca with Petrie in tow and Tiny and the Shepherds following loose. We finally got eyes on him, Tiny said hi, they squealed and if that stinker didn’t take off, tiny feet hammering the ground like the needle on a sewing machine, and disappeared into the timber. There was no way Blanca was keeping up with him in that.

Fine, I thought, he for sure knows where the other horses are now, so leave it up to him to join them.

The next day, no reported Levi sightings, no Ponystang grazing near the herd. So I got on Tiny, took Petrie with me and left Blanca at the barn for ‘bait’. She whinnies a lot when left alone, and I was hoping she’d call him to her. Wrong, but not a total fail… As I was coming back from riding a loop looking for Levi, I could hear him responding to her from somewhere up on the steepest of slopes where the trees are thick and riding near impossible. He wasn’t far but out of reach and sight and I was out of search time for the day but felt somewhat reassured having heard him at least.

Yesterday marked day 3 of my wild horse chase. I was hellbent on getting this guy caught. Having to tell my friend that I’ accidentally misplaced the horse she’d entrusted me with, trying to sleep knowing that he’s by himself in lion country… As much as Levi thinks he’s 18hh and 2,000lbs, he’s a mere 12.2hh small and snack size for a big cat out here without protection from the herd. Fences out here are notoriously on the honor system, with trees falling on them and wildlife or cattle tearing them up, so him getting out and wandering off to who knows where wasn’t exactly impossible either.

Yesterday afternoon, after the worst of the afternoon rains, Lacy and I set out after him. Even when she’s not 100%, this mare has more grit and athleticism than 3 other horses combined. She’s fast and nimble and a mountain climbing fool. It doesn’t hurt that she’s quite popular with the boys, so I was hoping that if we found him he’d be too enchanted to take off again.

We rode some stupid rugged terrain, climbed ridges to peek into valleys, scrambled through draws with downed timber, did cliff hanging on soggy slopes and finally heard an answer to her calls from right above us. As in, straight above us about 50 yards. Looking up I spotted Levi looking down at us. To get to him on a direct route I’d have had to be riding a gecko, so we switchbacked our way up the wet and rocky hill, getting closer as he continued to watch us with his typical dubious Levi side eye.

Getting closer, Lacy gave a friendly nicker instead of an evil grimace which I was very thankful for. The little prince charming approached as I was looking for a place to dismount without falling to my death. Shaking the feed container I’d brought along, I slid off of Lacy’s back, halter and lead rope in hand. The first attempt at catching him failed when he hopped sideways further up the mountain. *Insert expletives here* Another friendly, deep grumble from my comically deceiving and two-faced Mustang mare who knew just what to do when normally she’d be threatening to bite another horse’s head off by now, and I got a rope around his neck and the halter on Levi’s face, shoving a handful of cookies in his mouth as I muttered words that shall not be repeated under my breath.

I could hear the song Amazing Grace playing in my head as I ponied him back down to the truck… something about “once was lost but now am found” seemed rather apropos for the situation.

I hope you enjoy the photos of 2 of my 3 days of chasing a branded, gentled, otherwise friendly and rideable Mustang through the Rocky Mountains, especially the second to last picture of Levi looking mildly offended about his rewilding efforts coming to an abrupt end. First and last picture were taken from Levi’s back while riding the little monster bareback out alone.

Petrie the baby dragon is turning into a juvenile dragon. Still fiery, bigger now, with fewer tantrums and more willingness to think and work together. I can see glimpses of the proud and pretty mare she’ll be one day.

What started out as Petrie-paint-eater (she’s given my nice white car a zebra striped look, grrrrr), Petrie-panel-pusher (for the time she stuck her head through a panel, panicked and moved the whole pen before she got loose,… yeah, baby horses are great) and Petrie-pain-in-the-neck (opening doors and breaker boxes, knocking on walls in the middle of the night, pulling everything she could reach out of the tack room and spreading it through the yard… so cute. Not) is slowly turning into something that’s beginning to resemble a partnership. And my little ugly duckling is becoming a less little, more visually pleasing young mare.

She’s going to be 3 this year and is what I’d consider a ‘young’ 3yo. Both physically and mentally, she has a lot of growing up still to do, and I want to bring her along slowly so she can be mentally and physically prepared for a career as a pack and riding horse. She’s got big hoof prints to fill, with Littlefoot gone and Lacy’s return to full work still being a big question mark.

I often talk about the difference between getting a horse to do something and them actually owning and understanding what they’re doing, settling into it and doing it well. One could call one “manageable” and the other “competent”. Petrie, who came to Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy unhandled as part of our first load of Sale Authority Devil’s Garden Mustangs from the Double Devil Wild Horse Corrals last summer, is starting to get there.

We have a lot of fine-tuning left to do and with her being so young, I haven’t pushed her hard. But catching out in the field, saddling, ponying through all sorts of terrain, daylight or dark, tying, hobbling, loading and hauling, ground driving, packing a load (tires) for the first time, me sitting on her from the fence, Dustin the heeler sitting on her, standing for her first partial angle grinder trim… It’s all starting to come together nicely and I have hope that she’ll have a good first season as a pack horse with a light load this year. It feels less like having a snuffy little gangly baby wild horse out with the herd and more like interacting with a smart, curious, sassy and opinionated yet friendly and polite young Mustang mare. I’m excited for this summer with the not-so-little punk who’s been exactly what I needed to keep me on my toes.

One of my closest friends is moving out of state. We’re spending as much time together as we can before she leaves, so on Tuesday we met at one of our favorite riding spots, 3 Mustangs and 5 dogs in tow.

It was a hazy day (we’re getting smoke from the fires up in Canada) but sunny and the temperature was just right. We stopped to look at wildflowers, loped through mountain meadows, let the horses and dogs cool off in a pond and lay in the grass with the hobbled horses grazing nearby and the dogs jumping in and out of the water.

We crossed streams and climbed ridges, found beautifully twisted old trees and goofed around to our hearts’ content, just as happy and at peace as our wild-born horses and colorful pack of dogs.

A few short months ago a ride like this with Salt Wells Mustang gelding Tiny and DG Petrie would have looked a lot different. He’d have wanted to crow hop into the lope, fought his bit, tried to kick Petrie and been much less relaxed and responsive. Petrie would have been hesitant to follow along next to him on a loose rope, refused to lope in hand, gotten upset about saddling, and spooked at the running dogs.

I put time and focused attention into both of them over the winter, continuously evaluating what was and wasn’t working and making adjustments accordingly. There’s still a lot of room for growth but we’re getting along much better than we did and are having a lot more fun together.

It makes me smile to watch big ol’ Tiny run in a hackamore, with slack in the reins, the feisty filly beside us, as I’m yelling at the dogs to get out of the way (that part hasn’t changed).

With Lacy still out and Blanca too old for big adventures, I was dreading rather than looking forward to summer, longer rides and pack trips. After months of work on myself and with these two Mustangs I can honestly say I’m excited for it now.

On our way back from our ride we drove through our tiny little town just as school was about out. I unloaded not so tiny Tiny in front of our very tiny school so he could say hi to the students before they got on the bus. He even gave a couple of the teachers rides, in a halter in the school parking lot. I’m glad to have him be part of our Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy Ambassador herd.

Just because something doesn’t start out pretty, or easy, or we mess up or don’t trust our horse at first, or we doubt ourselves, that doesn’t mean it can’t change and get better. Time, effort, persistence and a willingness to learn, ask for help, adjust and reassess can make a huge difference. Mustangs make us better (horse) people if we let them, and I’m so very grateful for that.

It sounds so easy, right?

We “just” want to halter them/lead or load them/pony, pack, ride or drive them. Why won’t they just get it?

Because there is so much more to it for the horse, starting with the fact that nobody gave them a script for the play they’re suddenly expected to take a main role in.

This is true for both Mustangs and domestics, but for the wild ones there’s so much to catch up on before they are at the same level as a horse that maybe doesn’t know much yet but has been around humans all its life. A lot of it is mindset.

Learning to trust and respect humans, how to read and interact with them, learning to think before reacting, learning that many instinctual responses to stimuli no longer bring desired results (namely running away, kicking, biting, striking, rearing as a way of dealing with a perceived threat), learning to give to pressure instead of fighting it.

Learning to see and feel new objects, finding balance while one foot is being held up or with something on their back. Getting used to movement behind them not meaning they should run away or kick at it. Learning to stand tied. Learning to calmly accept halters, bridles, saddles, harnesses, blankets and boots being wrapped around parts of their bodies.

Learning to climb into a metal cave that closes behind them and takes them to unfamiliar places while they are trying to balance inside, watching scary, sometimes noisy objects fly by.

All of that goes against a horse’s instincts. They can’t read our minds or magically know what we’re trying to accomplish and that we don’t want to hurt them.

That’s why it’s important to break things down. And then break them down some more. It’s easier to go to the next step a little faster because the horse thinks it’s easy (that builds confidence) than to go back and fix something after skipping steps and confusing or scaring the horse (that destroys confidence and trust in the human).

This session of ponying 3yo Mustang mare Onyx with the pack saddle was about step 75 out of 100 while she was at Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy . We mastered several small steps even in this session. They were so tiny that she could succeed easily, have fun and end the session in a content and confident headspace, ready to still do more.

Blanca, the Shepherds and I enjoyed ourselves too. Breaking learning down into bite sized pieces, where the next one just falls into place like a logical, manageable next step is easier on everyone involved.

Warwick Schiller says in one of his podcasts, in the context of working with not so easy horses, “If you’re thorough you don’t have to be brave.”