This is the method I most commonly use to teach the wild ones to pick up their feet. Every once in a while I have one where I get them used to letting me touch their legs (separate process) and then find that they’re happier if I just use my hand rather than the leg rope. For the most part though, this is what I do.

I’m going to try and break the process down and explain briefly. Every horse is a little different, and it’s more important to watch the horse, yourself and your communication than to put your brain on autopilot to follow some cookie cutter training approach.

I’m a notorious rope dragger (There are two kinds of people in this world, rope draggers and rope carriers. You can identify them by what their ropes look like when the ground is wet ) so all the horses get used to ropes moving around them on the ground pretty quickly and I can move on to the next step. If you’re more organized with your lead ropes, you’ll need to get them used to ropes around their legs on the ground first.

I start by standing just a little off to the side (so I don’t get run over if they startle and jump forward) and swinging the lash of a training stick around their legs.

Then I put the leg rope (retired 12 or 14 ft lead rope with a loop instead of hardware) on the leg, starting with a front leg. On many horses I’ll use the hook on a stick as opposed to bending down and using my hands (as mentioned before that’s a separate training process for many wild ones).

Not pictured, but I first teach them to lead by each foot. That helps them get used to the idea of giving to the rope pressure rather than fighting it, and to the sensation of the rope around their pastern.

I always work on each front foot, then each hind foot. This process can take several sessions.

Then I ask for the leg, low at first and for just a moment. I start by rewarding just taking the weight off of the foot, then for more. With horses that don’t like me standing next to them yet I’ll ask for the leg forward, with others I might ask from the shoulder.

Either way, the position you ultimately want the leg in needs to be taught. Remember that they have no clue what you’re trying to accomplish so you need to break it down into small steps that make sense and are achievable. Also, some Mustangs are stiff/in pain from old injuries or arthritis and may have limited range of motion. Be mind- and respectful of that.

The idea is that I gradually work myself into the position I want to be in to pick up the foot by hand, little by little shortening the rope so I get closer to the foot, while also showing the horse the desired leg position.

Final steps are picking up foot with rope, and then taking it in my hand, picking up foot by hand and having the leg rope there for back up, and then graduating to picking up foot by hand without leg rope.

It’s totally ok to go back as many steps as possible if your horse forgot or is having an off day. Remember to also teach your wildie that people will be using tools such as hoof picks and rasps on his feet that look funny and make strange sounds on his hooves. He will need to learn to let you pull each foot forward too so it can rest on a stand for the farrier.

Don’t play farrier if you don’t know enough about hoof care, but it’s good to play pretend here as much as you safely can, and to introduce strangers to your Mustang, and to let them pick up his feet when it’s safe to do so, so that when the farrier shows up, it’s just another day in paradise and not some big traumatic event.

Horses pictured: Sand Wash Basin Mustang geldings Storm (dun) and Kiko (grulla). Sorry, no you can’t have them. They have wonderful homes and were/are with us at Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy for gentling.

From the looks of things, these two Mustangs are going to be making riding and packing season happen this year, and it’s time to get them out and about for some team building. Making the best of the situation at hand and moving forward… What else can we do?

Salt Wells WY gelding Tiny and Devil’s Garden filly Petrie went on their first longer ride together on a beautiful spring afternoon. It was Tiny’s first outing in the hackamore (I had said I’d wanted to do a re-start of sorts, so here we are) and Petrie’s first time with a good (and heavier) riding saddle.

Walk, trot, lope, climbing up and down steep slopes, crossing water, waiting together while I’m off doing something else… The pair did well. Tiny is strong enough to convince Petrie to keep going when she’d rather plant her feet (working the Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy training horses off of him here lately has given him the confidence to do that) and Petrie’s calm, mostly easy-going attitude is good for Tiny who sometimes worries about life.

Petrie has worn the pack saddle and carried tires on it. She’s only 3yo and I don’t like to put weight on them too early. I’ve ground driven and sat on her but haven’t ridden her yet. If she ends up being my pack horse this year I’ll be keeping the load light and the time she carries it short. She didn’t bat an eye at the heavier saddle and flopping stirrups. Time to take her out with the pack saddle soon.

Tiny is becoming more confident, soft and responsive in his old age (he’s in his teens). Getting taken off of the back burner has been good for the big guy. Never in a million years would I have thought he’d ever be my main riding horse, or that I’d be riding him in a hackamore and not feel like I’m going to die. I’ve stepped up my game with him and he’s responded in kind. While he’s still quirky and goofy, he’s also impressed me with the situations he thrives in and handles well.

He’s incredibly sure-footed, has a lot of energy and grit for his built and age, is more patient than my mares with the horses I pony off of him, and handles dogs underfoot, questionable footing, wind that all but blows you out of the saddle and riding in the dark like a champ. Tiny is wearing a bosal I brought home from the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko earlier this year and a The Colorful Cowgirl mecate. I’d like to see if I can get that hackamore to come up a bit higher on his nose. His noggin is significantly larger than the other horses’ (as is the rest of him, hence the name), and he may yet need a bosal of his own, we’ll see.

Before we go back to regularly scheduled programming, here’s a look behind the scenes.

I haven’t been posting much lately outside of announcing upcoming workshops. We have some other exciting announcements coming up and I have literally dozens of awesome pictures taken by our wonderful volunteers waiting to make their appearance on social media.

Horses have been getting worked, spring is finally here and I’m thrilled about our growing support network, partnerships and community of great people who all come together to help mustangs.

At the end of the day I do this work because I love horses, I love Mustangs and I love sharing that love with others, be that through teaching, pairing them up with a once wild horse of their own or sharing photos and creating content. Right now the two horses I’ve dedicated the most time, effort, emotions, training and learning to over the past 6 years are not ok and – I’m not going to lie – that’s hard.

Lacy, 8yo, the first BLM Mustang I ever gentled and my go-to riding partner for the past 3 years, has been down with a partial ligament tear in her left hock since January. The vet said then that she may or may not ever recover. Her rehab has been a daily, time-consuming task. The support we’ve received from friends volunteering their time to help her has been incredibly humbling. She’s moving much better on that leg and we got cleared for light riding sooner than I’d expected. The princess is as fiery and feisty as ever and has been thrilled to get back to work. However, there’s now something going on in her left front that’s causing her to take wrong steps and trip every so often and I’m not so patiently waiting for her next vet appointment to hopefully figure out what that is all about. To make matters more interesting, Lacy colicked last weekend. It was mild and she pulled through, but was it ever scary.

DG Littlefoot, 6yo, has been battling some mystery illness for well over a year now. He is the horse that caused me to fall in love with Devil’s Garden Mustangs. He’s the kindest horse I’ve ever known and despite being a normal, goofy youngster he was a horse that by the time he was 4yo anyone could ride (lightly), pack, skid logs with and enjoy being around. He was so safe and and friendly that he left our herd to be a trail horse for a friend who needed a horse like him.

Except that’s not what happened. Littlefoot has been struggling on and off and at the vet more than on the trail since early 2022. He is currently at CSU in hopes of finally finding some definitive answers. The short version is that more than likely he is not coming home. He has sternal osteomyelitis and some still unexplained other issue. His current quality of life is low and chances of survival slim. Unless something changes drastically, he will be euthanized within the next few days.

These horses are as close to … well… kids as I have and it’s hard being cheerful all the time when I don’t know if either of them is going to make it. I handle a lot of things with relative ease (I got kicked in the chest last year, that was a cakewalk compared to this). Animals not doing well is not one of them.

I’m done whining now but I figured I’d let you know that if I’m not posting, this is probably a big part of it. If you have a horse in training with Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy you can rest assured they are getting worked and you’re always welcome to check in. Here are some pictures from happier times with these two still so young Mustangs I gentled and started. Lacy was my first pack horse, with Littlefoot following in her footsteps when Blanca needed to step back from long rides. I like to pack horses for a season before I ride them and that’s served me – and them – well. Lacy is the dun, Littlefoot the bay.

Meet Blaze (coming 4yo sorrel mare), Spencer (sorrel yearling gelding), and Pia (bay yearling filly). Some of these pictures may be hard to look at, I apologize. These guys have had a rough go. They need weight put on, veterinary attention and trims. We are working towards that.

A friend of Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy found these three young, unhandled horses at auction, sent them to quarantine and contacted us, asking if we’d be willing to gentle them and find them suitable, loving homes. We had the space and here they are. We’re happy to help all horses as we’re able to.

We are gentling them just like the wild ones we take in. Blaze appears to have had some prior handling, the yearlings don’t seem to know human touch.

I’ve since been able to halter, lead and brush Blaze. The two youngsters are learning to lead by the neck rope (soft flat braid cotton rope) and accepting touch with the stick.

Please keep these three in mind if you are looking to adopt or know someone who is. Branded or not, these horses deserve a much better life than they’ve had so far.

Located in Guffey, Colorado. Adoption contract and fee apply. Please PM us or email us at info@wildhorseoutreach.org if you’d like to know more.

If you have or know of a horse in need of gentling, feel free to reach out. Life is much easier and safer for them when they don’t have to live in fear and can get their basic needs met (vet and farrier care at the very least). We gentle horses of all ages, branded or otherwise, for individuals and organizations. If you don’t already watch our stories on Facebook and Instagram, I encourage you to do so, as we share photos and videos there daily.

One of my favorite Charlie Mackesy quotes goes like this:

“I can’t see a way through”, said the boy.

“Can you see your next step?”

“Yes”

“Just take that”, said the horse.

I feel like that’s been the story of my life. Growing up, changing paths a few times because what I really wanted to do was trained out of me, traveling and later moving to a new continent, some years later the need to somehow figure things out on my own.

Horses have been one of the only constants in my life. Never once would I have dreamed I’d be living alone in the mountainous middle of nowhere, Colorado, surrounded by wild horses, loyal German Shepherds and willful cats.

I vividly remember not knowing that horses could climb hills (I grew up at sea level, our tallest ‘mountain’ was 30ft tall, that’s where all the kids flocked to for sledding on the very occasional inch of snow).

My first encounter with a guy in a cowboy hat is one I’ll never forget, because I didn’t actually know that cowboys were real (I thought they’d long gone extinct, and yes there’s an embarrassing but funny story hiding in there somewhere).

Fast forward a few more years and I finally discovered, after years and years of working with domestics with people problems and other man-made challenges, that there were still real wild Mustangs and that a lot of them were looking for homes.

What started as slowly gentling one wild horse at a time morphed into a nonprofit organization that works with dozens of wild horses each year.

And here we are, I have a wonderful, colorful network of supportive people around me and together we’ve gentled well over 100 Mustangs and helped them find their humans.

(Sidenote: If you don’t particularly like horses but you pay taxes… You’re welcome. Here’s why: Each wild horse that lives out its life in holding costs the tax payer approx. 55k, yes $55,000, and that’s a pre-Covid number; hay prices alone have all but doubled since.)

I had no way to predict, as a little nerdy, horse-crazy kid that grew up in east Germany and was bullied at school for not being cool/pretty/whatever enough, that I’d end up doing what I’m doing now.

I still feel like I’m putting one foot in front of the other without being able to see all that lies ahead, but I’m learning to trust the process.

The best thing I’ve learned through this work and the people I meet along the way is that there are many more good people out there than bad ones, that we can all mess up and learn and grow, and we’re all just here trying to do the best we can with what we know at the time. That’s what gives me hope every day to get up and try again.

As for this ride, scenic as it was, I think I got a little more “mature hair” from it. Bushwhacking along an unplanned route, ending up in a mess of downed timber, in mud, climbing up some Man from Snowy River type hill that looked a lot less steep from the bottom than it actually was, and on the way back coming around a turn just to end up nose to nose with cow moose… All to see a hidden lake the GPS said was really close. I think I used every cussword I know in at least two different languages (English and German) on that ride. We finally made it, the lake was beautiful, both Mustangs did great, nobody died, and it made for yet another pack trip story for the book I hope to write one day. Definitely another one foot in front of the other, trust your horse and hope it all works out kinda day of backcountry bliss.

Three different ground driving sessions, in reverse order from this week to last week to when we first started. Brought to you by one of our fan favorites, Frank Stetson, coming 4yo gelding from Sand Wash Basin, Colorado.

He’s accepting contact on the bit now and following my guidance from voice, reins and whip much more readily and with far less confusion. The first session was only about getting used to the feel of the reins along his body and legs and following the rail. Later he learned to stop and steer, transition between gaits and confidently come off of the rail. It’s a process and he’s not perfect at it yet but he has a good foundation.

I learned to drive in Germany and Hungary. A friend and I were dragging pastures with Shetland Ponies and doing sled races with the same ponies long before we were even teenagers. That was after we trained them to ride and drive as they were basically feral. I still love driving and I believe that ground driving is an important step for the up and coming riding horse, even if they’re never going to pull or drag anything for a living.

It teaches them voice, speed and directional control, to understand and not fear the bit, to be out front rather than follow a person or another horse. It teaches them to stand patiently and wait for direction, not to freak out when they get touched by or tangled up in the long lines (driving reins). The whip takes the place of the rider’s legs, gently reinforces voice commands and can even help steer.

Frank Stetson came to us wild from the holding facility in Cañon City. He is leaving in a few days to live with his adopter and begin his career as a riding horse. We’ll miss him, he’s turned into a friendly, willing partner that meets us at the gate and nickers to us.

Thanks again to our clients, owners and adopters for trusting Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy with your wild ones.

Thank you to Tay Martin for keeping all our wildies fed and happy and to Linnea Helander for dressing up the pony and taking pictures!

Out and about early a couple of weeks ago to start the day with the Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy Ambassador herd. They’re still fuzzy but started shedding a while ago, giving me hope that spring will eventually arrive after a long, cold winter.

The plan for this year is to travel with the herd (hopefully including Lacy) to different events, giving more people an opportunity to meet the Mustangs in person, to ask questions, to see that wild horses come in many colors, shapes, sizes and personalities, and to learn about all things Mustang.

With so many once wild horses looking for homes, we need to grow the Mustang community. Responsibly and sustainably… As many of you know, bringing home a wildie, whether unhandled, gentled or already saddle trained, is a huge commitment and an expense that goes far beyond the initial adoption fee or purchase price.

Our goal is to help as many Mustangs as possible find good, long-term homes where they receive the care and in most cases continued training they need to be healthy, happy and safe in our world. What better way to accomplish that than through giving prospective adopters the opportunity to meet and interact with these horses, to learn about them, as well as available options and resources before making a hopefully well-informed decision to bring a Mustang into their lives?

One thing that gets in our and our wild horse’s way – namely in the way of building a relationship based on mutual understanding and trust, of making lasting progress without lots of big fireworks and having to go back and repair damages – is being so focused on the outcome that we forget how important it is to pay attention to the process of getting there.

My old mare Blanca is an example of that. She’s always been forward and I love that about her. The problem is that she gets so focused on getting somewhere (to the top of the ridge, down a hill, to some cows) that she doesn’t pay attention to what’s under her feet, so inevitably she trips and nearly falls on her face.

Riding Blanca – who was older and well but not gently used when she came into my life – down a hill used to be terrifying with how chargy she was.

That wasn’t good for her, not fun for me, not safe for either one of us. It’s taken considerable, deliberate effort to get her soft and tuned into me enough that she’ll actually settle down and listen when I ask her to take one step at a time and pay attention if not to the ground then at least to my requests to calm herself, be in the here and now, and take it one step at a time. That’s how we haven’t crashed and gone a** over teakettle in all these years of mountain riding.

More often than not it’s us doing the rushing, not the horse.

Pictured here is Schatzi, 11yo Sand Wash Basin Mustang gelding. He was with Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy for his introduction to being handled and trusting humans and has since gone home to For the Love of Aria to live out his days peacefully and well cared-for in a herd of mostly older Sand Wash Basin Mustangs. I hear he will have some of his mares from the range re-joining him soon.

Schatzi was weary of people at first. Not panicky but definitely reserved. He wasn’t excited about allowing touch behind his eye, on his legs or about picking up his feet. He spent 9 years on the range, who can blame him?

Had we focused on “just getting him to do it”, it would have been a fight I had no way of winning and one that would have given him an ugly taste about interacting with humans. Instead we focused on the process, the journey towards being able to catch and halter him, to lead him, to touch him all over and pick up his feet, allowing him to understand and be ok with each step along the way.

I remind myself and our volunteers often to not “get greedy”, but to focus on breaking things down and making sure the horse is ok with what’s going on in each moment, rather than somehow getting to the desired outcome, missing all the small signals and steps along the way. The former creates a relaxed and trusting horse (with practice), the latter creates holes in their foundation that will come back to bite us and that we’ll need to go back and fix.

We’ve probably all done it, we’ll probably do it again. But to remember to focus on the how, not just the what, to be present and listen to the horse, addressing issues in the moment rather than ignoring them as we’re aiming for some greater goal, to pay attention to the journey as we work towards an outcome is what makes the magic happen.

And yes, that’s Schatzi enjoying a good butt scratch. That’s a handy way of getting them used to and ok with us being around their hind end without always suspecting we want to move them, pick up a foot or take their temperature.

Thank you to our partner organizations, Mustang adopters and owners for entrusting us with gentling and training your wild ones. We appreciate it and we love all the updates!

PC: Linnea Helander , Tay Martin

Training halter and lead rope: Rowdy’s Ropes

This post is only a year and a half overdue. Sometimes it takes me that long to put something into perspective.

November 2021, a long-anticipated pack trip with friends into the middle of nowhere, Southern Utah. First time taking the Mustangs out of state. First time packing in the desert. First time sleeping outside on my birthday, literally under the stars because it was so warm and dry that most of us decided against setting up our tents.

I’ve always loved the desert with its unique and colorful rock formations, sandy washes and hardy, surprisingly abundant plant and animal life that’s so well adjusted to surviving under extremely arid conditions. Desert packing however is an entirely different kind of adventure.

Things had been going pretty smoothly until we reached what would be our camp site for the next few days. A colorful herd of longhorn cattle scattered as we approached. Apparently they had been drinking from what I would soon learn was called a pothole, a sandstone basin that collects rain water and may be the only water source for miles around.

When we continued to hear splashing sounds long after the last of the cattle had disappeared into the juniper and sage covered hills, we decided to investigate. What we found would drastically change our plans for the days to come.

One of the longhorns, a cow, was in the pothole, slipped or pushed in while the herd was drinking. She was desperately struggling to free herself, but the steep and slippery sandstone caused her to slide back down each time she tried to climb out.

Buttercup, as we called her both affectionately and euphemistically (she wasn’t a particularly personable bovine, making trying to help her a bit of a treacherous endeavor), was not only in a bind herself, she was also contaminating one of the only water filled potholes in the area.

In the end it took 4 days, about 200 rocks, 3 horses, 4 ropes and 7 people to free Buttercup. We ended up with a live cow only because we were determined not to let her die if we could at all help it, and because one of had a GPS capable of 2 way satellite communication (no cell service that far out).

With that we were able to, on day 2, reach the rancher who had the grazing lease in that area and give him our location. It took him and his helpers 2 days to get to us, a day longer than expected because their pack horse, a Mustang, got into quicksand. Several hours and a broken pack saddle later, he was out and they ended up spending the night to let him rest and so they didn’t have to risk another wreck trying to find us in the dark.

Instead of day riding like we had planned we would do short rides in between checking on the ungrateful cow and spend hours carrying rocks to slide into the hole in hopes of making it possible for her to climb out on her own. Efforts to pull her out had already failed and she was slowly getting weak. We were getting low on feed for our stock, clean water for humans and animals was running out, and we wouldn’t be able to stay out there much longer.

Once help arrived it took all hands on deck, several attempts and some saddle swapping, lots of coaxing the horses that were pulling and every available rope to pull the cow to safety.

She was a lot weaker but no friendlier by the time all four feet were back on dry sand. By that evening she was standing up and eating the alfalfa cubes her owner had packed in for her, and by the following morning she had wandered off to rejoin her herd.

We rode much less than we’d hoped on that trip but saving Buttercup the cantankerous longhorn was the right thing to do and made for memories I’ll never forget. Things can get wild quickly out in the backcountry. Extra rope, two-way satellite communication and at least one additional day’s worth of food for man and beast are more critical than I’d expected. And whatever you do, avoid drinking out of a cow’s bathtub if at all possible.

One of the things that makes working with Mustangs so special, yet also raw and humbling is that they are some of the best lie detectors around. They respond to what they perceive rather than to what we would like them or others to believe.

In that way they are true mirrors of not only our horsemanship but also of all the other ‘stuff’ we bring into the pen with us. Just like with actual mirrors, we might not always enjoy what’s looking back at us.

A wild horse’s senses are so well developed from living on the range that he picks up on and responds to incongruence (i.e. a lack of consistency or appropriateness, as in inappropriate affect or as when one’s subjective evaluation of a situation is at odds with reality) much more acutely than many domestics that have been exposed to human shenanigans, bad days, poor timing and various different handlers since birth.

Nobody is perfect, that’s not the point. The point is that if we let these very perceptive and brutally honest horses crack us open and show us our blind spots, we have a chance to take their feedback to heart and give the horse what he needs from us, in turn also giving what we need to ourselves.

Situational, self- and other-awareness all go together. When I’m in my head, I can’t be present with and for the horse. With domestics that’s not particularly useful. With wild ones, that’s downright dangerous, for me, for the horse, and for others around us.

If I can have self-compassion, I can have compassion for the horse. If I’m tuned in to the quiet signals the horse is sending me, two things are likely to happen: I’m going to get fewer big reactions from the horse because I didn’t ignore the ‘whispers’, and I’m more likely to be intentional about and tuned in to the signals I’m sending to the horse as well.

I’ve seen horse training get pretty mechanical. Lunge 3 laps to the left and 4 to the right and then back up 10 steps for respect. Not because that’s what the horse needs but because that’s what the book/trainer/video said to do. A mentally checked out handler catching, brushing or working a horse. That’s doing things at the horse, not with him. That’s a monologue, not a conversation. A 12yo domestic may have learned over time to be tolerant, forgiving and fill in for us. A still partially wild Mustang has none of that conditioning.

Being present, being open, being vulnerable, willing to learn and try something different, to ask for help, to swallow our pride several times a day, to look inward at what it is I’m bringing to the horse, every day, and still keep going, that’s what makes getting along with wild horses and helping them become not-so-wild horses work. I often wonder who is gentling whom.

This handsome dun gelding is Storm, at 22yo the oldest – to date – wild horse we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know and work with. He is a Sand Wash Basin Mustang who is spending some time with us at Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy . He is learning how to safely interact with humans before joining the sanctuary herd at For the Love of Aria. He’s an old soul who spent 20years living wild yet he’s taking to gentling well. He’s calm and curious, reserved but not reactive.

I’ve been asked if I feel sorry for Storm, having to adapt to life off the range this late in life. He is playful and bright-eyed, adjusting better to being handled than a lot of much younger Mustangs I’ve met. Looking at his body condition he might not have made it this long in the wild. The free choice grass alfalfa mix he’s getting and not having to fight other horses over food or mares, walk miles to find water or dig for dead grass under feet of snow is going to make the rest of this winter easy on the old man. He’ll benefit from a dental when the time comes. Those are hard to come by in the wild. As is complete feed for senior horses that can no longer properly chew or digest grass.

He’s lucky enough to get to be wild with benefits for the rest of his days. Friends, food, space and having his every need attended to. He won’t need to live in fear, pain, hunger or thirst. That’s a pretty sweet deal.

Excuse the mud, mud season is the 5th season around here

PC: Linnea Helander