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

Growing up, hearing those words – in German, no less – usually from my mom or one of my grandmothers was a certain indicator of impending trouble.

This is different. Remember when we did a fundraiser late last year for a chute? Well, the stars aligned in such a way that required things to be both expedited and adjusted a bit, and here we are.

To all who have purchased auction items, sent donations for a chute, donated on behalf of loved ones over the holidays, sent horses to us for gentling, adopted from us… You all made this possible and all of us at Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy couldn’t be more grateful. Your support is making a huge difference, and we truly couldn’t do this work without you!

Taylor says we could doctor medium sized dinosaurs in this setup. I hope we won’t need to but I sure am excited to be able to help a not yet gentled Mustang in a medical emergency, to get a halter or a tag off in a pinch, rather than having to wait until the horse is sufficiently far along in its gentling.

Part of responsibly working with and caring for wild horses is having a plan in place for what to do in the event of accidents, illness, injuries, hoof issues and the like. This has been a long time in the making and while it’s not something we hope to need often, we’re thankful and excited to have it.

These are tall, heavy gauge steel panels and adjustable rolling block doors made with thick wood. We’ll be adding some more height as we go – because while 6ft is nice, 8 or 9ft is much better – but it’s here, it’s up and it’s ready to use.

This has been the puzzle from hell, but that’s another story. My dad putting together IKEA furniture while refusing to look at the instructions when I was a kid was nothing compared to this experience. At least he had instructions he could refuse to look at. Many thanks to all who persevered and helped put this whole thing together! Here’s to another exciting step as we work to consistently improve and expand upon how we help and show up for the wild horses in our care.

In other news, this past week we had the pleasure of giving Ashley Ahearn , journalist, horsewoman and Mustang adopter, a behind the scenes look at the what, how and why here at Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy .

She flew out from Washington to spend a blustery winter day with us and do a podcast interview for a new NPR podcast series on wild horses. Wild Spirit Mountain Lodge , thank you for making Ashley feel at home and for a wonderful dinner.

Ashley met the training horses, several of our volunteers, our amazing farrier Cassie with CK Hoof Care , the Ambassador herd and of course Denali and Ranger. Tiny and the Shepherds tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to nibble on and steal the microphone.

The interview and having Ashley come out to spend time with us was a pinch-me moment on so many levels. I’m still kind of talked out, so I’ll try and keep it short on here today.

I feel humbled and am in grateful disbelief over how things have been coming together lately after years of quiet, hard work, learning, and moving forward, often against all odds.

I’m so beyond thankful for our growing tribe of supportive individuals and organizations, causing us to be able to help more Mustangs and do so with increasing efficiency.

I need to get busy scheduling workshops for this year. Gentling wild horses is only part of our work. Teaching and helping people is the other.

It was a pleasure to meet and chat with you Ashley. I look forward to meeting up again in the not too distant future. Thank you for all you do for the people, the animals and the rangelands in the West!

Ashley has two podcast series already on Spotify, “Women’s Work” and “Grouse”. I’d highly recommend you give them a listen.

I’m all but speechless (doesn’t happen often ) and overwhelmed with gratitude and excitement about this week’s events. Somehow Mustangs bring out the best in people and the best people together, and with so many neat things coming together all at once, it’s hard to decide where to begin…

We’ve been keeping a baby announcement from you – only for a day because it’s been insanely busy – so we’ll get to that first.

Many of you might remember the story of the Colorado 5, five Mustang mares who were saved from a tragic ending, after finding themselves malnourished and traumatized in a kill pen, by Skydog Sanctuary and American Wild Horse Campaign. The two organizations came together to purchase a total of 16 branded Mustangs that day and place them with trainers for gentling and adopting out into suitable, loving homes. 5 of them came to Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy. We would later find out that 3 of the 5 were pregnant.

Moana, a 3yo mare from Pokegama HMA in Oregon, was one of them. Exposed to an unknown stud (or jack, we weren’t sure at the time) sometime in between being adopted and falling into the hands of a kill buyer.

Because someone is going to ask: Yes, there are kill buyers and kill pens here in the US. Yes, horse slaughter is illegal in this country. The horses get shipped to Canada and Mexico for slaughter. Yes, titled Mustangs can be sold at auction for anyone to buy, including kill buyers. No, we should not all run and give kill buyers all our money, because all they do is use it to buy more horses. It’s a very, very sad industry and a vicious cycle. Anyway, these 16 Mustangs, whose adopters failed them miserably, got a second chance at life, after quarantine and significant physical and mental rehabilitation efforts.

We had found an out of state adopter for Moana, who just recently let her guard down and embraced life with humans, when it became apparent that she was getting too close to foaling to travel. She is a young mare and on the smaller side, expecting what is likely her first foal. We are located pretty far from anywhere, at high elevation and have had a pretty rough, cold winter. Our friends at For the Love of Aria offered to foster Moana, and foal her out at their facility at lower elevation that is set up for all levels of medical care and rehabilitation.

Our timing was just right, they picked her up last weekend and yesterday morning she delivered a beautiful, healthy bay filly. Momma and baby are doing well and we’re all super excited.

Thank you to all the organizations and individuals involved in giving this young Mustang mare and her foal a chance to live and thrive – the staff members and volunteers, donors, haulers, vets, our farrier and everyone I’m forgetting in my excitement – for coming together and making the world a better place and my heart full.

Here’s Blanca, the bestest, fluffiest, toughest and cutest old mare, putting up with a young Mustang, DG Petrie, while getting a job done.

Petrie is a coming 3yo filly out of last year’s load of Devil’s Garden Mustangs from the Double Devil Wild Horse Corrals. We’re currently working on the new load… We’re only a teeny tiny bit excited

The last few nights when I was out feeding and checking on the Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy Ambassador herd (minus Lacy, who’s still on sick leave), I was thinking about how much more there is to really getting a Mustang acclimated to living in our world than just gentling or what we might consider basic handling.

There are so many firsts for them, so many things we take for granted in domestics – who often get handled from birth, getting used to humans, their pets and kids, the many weird objects humans keep around and the goofy things they do – that a wild born horse has never seen, heard, smelled, felt or experienced before.

In addition to that, habituation takes practice. Good, effective practice and useful repetition. That’s something I have to remind myself of over and over after turning a newly gentled Mustang out with the herd.

It’s easy to treat that horse as “one of the grown-ups” when in reality they are still so, so green and will forget how to be caught, how to pick up their feet etc if we let them sit and forget to practice because the horse has already graduated basic training.

They also need to learn to be alone with us, which is why I take Petrie, who thankfully is pretty independent, on walks without the other horses. Of course I’d like to just pony her because it’s fun, but I want her to be looking to me, not the other horse, for guidance and direction, so that when the time comes I’ll have a partner that’s confident riding out alone.

Here’s some food for thought: Imagine getting abducted by aliens and taken to Mars. You get put in a classroom, alone or with a small number of other humans, and for the next 4 to 8 weeks you stay in that room or building, learning a few words of Martian, getting used to how your teachers look, talk, dress and move, and to the objects that are in that building.

After that they kick you out into Martian society that’s full of stuff you never saw in your first few weeks, and expect you to know your way around with your limited vocabulary and exposure to all things Martian. You finally meet some humans again, who happen to speak your language, so you’re at least relieved to have that and you don’t worry so much for a while although you still find your surroundings rather unfamiliar and strange.

Then after another few weeks, the Martians pick you up out of your group and take you to a different building, again with different objects, and expect you to understand them after not having practiced what little bit of Martian you did know, and to go to work doing something that’s not making any sense to you.

You watch them get frustrated while you’re totally overwhelmed with the sights and sounds around you, you miss your fellow humans and are desperately trying to remember what Martian you did know so you can maybe get an idea of what they want from you.

That doesn’t sound fun now, does it? That’s probably about how our Mustangs feel if we don’t give them the consistent attention, understanding, time and exposure required to facilitate a successful and seamless transition into living in our world.

That’s also why there are so many project Mustangs looking for new homes and hardly any really seasoned, well adjusted ones.

Once they do get comfortable with their new life and have had lots of practice with all that’s expected of them, most can eventually be treated like a domestic in that they will stay ‘tame’ and ‘broke’ even if they sit for a few weeks.

But the first several months or couple of years, depending on how much time you spend with your wild one(s) and how much of our world you’re able to show them during that time, you want to be prepared to support your once wild horse if you want them to be successful and become the partner you envision.

This is gentling session # 3 with Behne, 12yo per BLM paperwork, from Sand Wash Basin, Colorado. He already has a loving home, he is with Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy for basic handling and to learn to like human interaction.

He leads, backs, is starting to yield shoulders, hind quarters and send off in either direction on cue.

This is us working up to and getting the first touches.

I didn’t run or flag the tar out of him, he’s barely ever worked up a sweat, even in his winter coat. I’m trying to get his mind engaged, not his body tired.

When we work with wild horses, we try to keep our sessions short, meaningful, focused and leave the horse feeling confident and asking for more. I call it “leaving some fuel in the tank”.

That way when we come back to them the next time, they’re more likely to be curious and eager than exhausted and resentful.

I’d rather put in 30 minutes and make every second count than drill on a sweaty, tired, scared or frustrated horse for an hour because someone said it has to be a 60 minute session, or there needs to be sweat and dus flying for it to count, or that you can’t quit until you’ve reached your goal.

What I consider a good session often looks pretty boring for people who wouldn’t yet know how to appreciate quiet, steady progress. The Mustang stays below threshold of what his nervous system can handle, but is still engaged enough to learn.

There’s a fine line we need to walk: When they’re bored or not being “heard” they don’t learn. When they’re overstimulated, in fight, flight or freeze, the brain goes off-line and they’re reacting, not responding. That’s where things get dangerous.

Do sessions with higher ‘entertainment value’ happen? Yes they do. Less and less often the more I learn and the more we improve our setup and are able to help the horse find the ‘right’ answer sooner and more easily.

When things do get exciting, I look for the smallest common denominator to bring us back on the same page. Something we can both do, agree on, feel good about and later build or rebuild from. Afterwards I look inward and reflect on ways to do better next time.

When we’re working with, rather than at the horse, Mustang gentling doesn’t have to be chaos, doesn’t have to be scary but can still be effective and yield prompt results.

It’s our job to get these horses out of living in fear and help them trust and understand so they can then be doctored, trimmed, loved on, turned out with other horses, started under saddle, you name it. This is not about tiptoeing and dragging out feet to keep the peace at all cost.

This is about learning to read the horse, understanding how the horse learns and making it easy for them to succeed. There’s a whole lot of questioning and revising our approach and presentation to make things work better, because once we learn to get our of our own and the horse’s way, they usually will do just fine.

This boy is 9yo Sand Wash Basin Mustang gelding Cary, the youngest of the older geldings we’ve recently had the pleasure of working with. Interestingly enough, with his relative youth he was the more challenging one even though the others took/are taking a little longer to settle down initially.

The other geldings are/were 11 (Schatzi, previously thought to be 14), 12 (Behne, unknown on the range) and 22 (Storm), all from Sand Wash Basin.

Honestly, if I could just work with mature geldings all day, I would. For personal horses, I’m a mare person because I appreciate the sass and opinions. I also understand that younger horses usually make better riding prospects. And I love them all, whether they are 3 weeks or 30 years old.

But these wise, battle-scarred former stallions that grew to maturity on the range hold a special place in my heart.

They have a unique presence that comes from having to hold their own in fights, from claiming and protecting mares and foals.

Where mature Mustang mares can be fierce, their gelding counterparts tend to be attentive yet quiet and matter-of-fact once they understand the new situation. The baby brain is long gone and they typically use their energy wisely. You can’t fool them but you can win them over.

When gentling all Mustangs, but especially these mature boys, I do my best to not go out there looking for a fight. Because if I do that, I know I’m going to find one, and I frankly have no desire to go there with a once wild stallion who knows exactly how to use and position his body to protect himself and injure or kill an opponent.

It’s possible and much easier to show them, step by step, how their new life works. It may take a little longer initially but if we set it up to where it’s easy for them to find the comfort of the “right” answer, they will quickly gravitate towards that, provided we are clear and consistent rather than wishy-washy in our body language, cues and expectations.

Cary and Schatzi were here at Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy for two months of basic handling (catch and halter, lead, load, lunge, send, tie, pick up feet, fly spray, obstacles, meeting lots of new people, getting used to dogs and different objects, sights and sounds) and an introduction to partnering with humans.

They went home last weekend and we miss them so much. They’re in the best of hands at For the Love of Aria and we know where to find them if we want to watch them enjoy life with their herd and give them a hug.

Pictures of some end of session cuddles and scratches with handsome and always muddy Cary. It’s not exactly bath weather yet at this altitude.

Relationship building is just as important as formal training in setting once wild horses up for success in their new homes. As it turns out, butt scratches are the key to many a tough wild one’s heart, Cary being no exception.

PC: Linnea Helander

Rowdy’s Ropes Montana Rio Buckaroo Hats Outback Trading Company LTD. (and about 6 more layers plus hand warmers because this winter has been so cold)