I do a lot of backcountry riding far from groomed trails, exploring new-to-me country and difficult terrain, and “I just want to see what’s on the other side of that ridge”. That leads to many an unexpected adventure.

I’m also not, not even in the least little bit, a fearless rider, or a fearless person for that matter. Quite to the contrary. I’ve just learned – and am very much still learning – when to face my fears and reason my way through them, and when to listen to them and adjust what I’m doing. In life, on the trail and in the gentling pen.

We often talk about how horses can’t learn when they’re pushed so far out of their comfort zone that they are in survival mode (fight, flight or freeze). It’s not much different for humans.

I know that when I reach a certain point of discomfort, I become a liability to my horse and myself (and to others… don’t approach, will snap). I either freeze, tighten the reins too much or get angry. Neither of them are helpful and all can be dangerous in rough country.

So if things get too weird, I’m quick to get off my horse. Even if the horse could handle it. Yes, some might say that’s not safe either. Well, neither is getting in my horse’s way and getting all of us hurt or ruining their trust in me. I’ve sent my horses up and down steep terrain alone, in front, behind or beside me. We’re all still alive, stayed safe and were better off for the dismount.

This is not a clear-cut, black-and-white matter that’s the same for everyone. It’s not the same from year to year or horse to horse. I do things now that I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking on 5 years ago. I do things with Lacy that I wouldn’t do with Blanca. And vice versa. Same with Tiny. I imagine 5 years from now it’ll be entirely different again.

They all have different strengths and capabilities, both physically and mentally. Those also change and evolve as we grow together, they mature and then again as they age and need to take it a little easier.

There’s a lot of middle ground between living in a bubble and being reckless. Growth does happen at the edge of our comfort zone, no matter how big or small that comfort zone currently is. We owe it to ourselves and our horses to listen to ourselves and them, and to proceed accordingly.

You can totally feel like you’re a bit of a wimp and still experience and create epic adventures. I know because that’s what I did, and am still doing. Not by jumping off the cliff with my eyes closed but by putting in the work and one foot in front of the other, over and over, year after year. If I wanted to wait to get out until I’m not afraid, I’d die on my couch and that’s not happening.

Pictures are from this week’s ride (hint: there’s at least one Mustang in EVERY picture ). I got us in a bind again by thinking that riding down a different draw on the same ridge would be just as manageable as the draw we came up, just a few hundred feet over. Turns out that was flawed logic. The final few hundred feet of our descent involved some creative problem solving and colorful language.

This was not our first rodeo (metaphorically speaking, that is), and parking horses on their own is nothing new for me or them. Tiny has learned to play follow the leader when I turn him loose. It’s very much in line with his personality and he’s incredibly sure-footed. Lacy is no rookie anymore either. She patiently stood in between the rocks, waiting for me to scope things out and find a way down.

The last picture… That’s my I-think-I-can face. Not happy because of the drop off (don’t like those either) but not so far gone that I couldn’t get us through it. It’s a fine line and definitely a case-by-case decision how we get through what we get into out there.

3 Mustangs, same HMA, all geldings, got here the same day, have had the same number of sessions, all 3 very sane and very, very smart. Oh and handsome, let’s not forget that. We all spend a lot of time just drooling over them. Not ideal when it’s 20 degrees out.

These pictures are from their 3rd session (I think). 3 completely different approaches to accommodate for 3 totally different personalities.

Since everything in this post seems to come in 3s, here are what I find to be 3 of the most important things when gentling Mustangs, or doing anything with any horse for that matter:

Being able to read the horse. What is their emotional state, when can I ask for more, when do I need to back off? What is their personality, how do they view me?

Being able to be present in the moment, mindful of my own emotions and how I move my body. That includes breathing and actively seeking connection with the horse. This is not woo. It just doesn’t work when I’m thinking about what I need to add to my shopping list while expecting the horse to be totally tuned in to me. Connection is a two-way street, in any relationship.

Having tools in my toolbox that fit the situation at hand. That’s how it all comes together:

I need to figure out where the horse is at on any given day, I need to show up for the horse, and I need to know what to do about it.

Easier said than done sometimes? Of course. Still, I believe these are the ingredients for success. And why learning – not just about horses and training techniques, but also and especially ourselves – is so important.

Adjusting to the horse, to the situation at hand, adjusting our attitude… I often say to myself, and to our volunteers when we are working with the wild ones we are gentling “Is what you’re doing working [for you/the horse]?” If the answer is no then what’s more of the same going to do? Yes, that’s shrink talk, as is “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.”

True though, isn’t it? I read so many posts along the lines of “I’ve had my Mustang for x many months, I’ve been doing x, and I still can’t x” That’s because one or more of the 3 aforementioned points aren’t there. This is not to shame anyone, but to encourage learning and reaching out for help when needed.

Also, if you’ve missed it, these 3 are our newest students, Sand Wash Basin Mustang geldings Cary (8yo grey), Schatzi (13yo dun) and Frank Stetson (3yo buckskin). They all have wonderful homes and are with Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy for gentling before joining their adopters.

For the Love of Aria and Troublesome Horse Rescue and Rehabilitation, Inc.

PC and kudos to our fearless photographer Tay Martin who tolerated unspeakable temperatures to document these sessions.

Here’s a post I’ve been dreading writing. A post about the word that starts with ‘ew’. Ew for vulnerability.

6 years ago gentling Mustangs started as a wild experiment (pun intended) after over 2 decades of working with domestics of all sizes, on 2 continents, with horses that had varying amounts of human-induced baggage.

As what is now Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy (WHOA) morphed into a nonprofit organization, began to gain traction and literally develop a life and dynamic of its own, I pulled back and made our online presence less about me and more about our horses, our mission, about trying to help and inspire others.

That felt right at the time and for years after, until it didn’t. We’ve reached a point now where I go to an adoption event and complete strangers walk up to me and tell me that they’ve been following me on social media for however long and are so happy to meet me.

That feels humbling, flattering, terrifying and so, so strange. Because these people don’t know me. They don’t know the first thing about me, and I’ve made sure of that with every post and every word within each post being carefully calculated. Honest, yes, but meant to reveal only so much about who ‘I’ actually am.

There are multiple reasons for that:

For one, I didn’t think it mattered because I don’t consider this wild ride that is working with Mustangs, being part of the Mustang community and being the director of WHOA to be about me. It’s about learning, about showing up for the horses, about adopters and owners needing help, and about finding workable solutions in difficult, sometimes downright messy and dangerous territory.

Two, I’m German (yes, like actually from Germany) and we’re conditioned to hold our cards close, not to show emotions or talk about them in public. Preferably we don’t have them in the first place.

Finally, I have a parallel existence as a mental health counselor (yep, a shrink. I don’t actually say “How does that make you feel?” to anyone, ever. There’s also no red couch), and that’s where it gets especially exciting because you never know when you’ll have that one client that’ll stalk you, or be sitting in your house one night when you get home and turn the lights on. Being very careful with what you tell others about you is critical, and drilled into you from the minute you start seeing clients.

I believe that life is seasonal. That what holds true and works for us in one chapter of our lives may no longer do so in the next. We learn, we grow (hopefully), we change, people come and go, whether we like it or not. When something no longer works, it’s our right, and our obligation in a way to either change what we do or let it go, and find something, someone or a way of thinking and showing up in the world that’s different than before.

With that said, it feels right now to be a bit more transparent going forward, to let you all in a little closer so that at least you know who you are following, supporting or hating on, and to give you the information to either run away screaming or come along for the ride.

Just so you know, this is scary stuff for me. Circling back to the title of this post, that’s been my life motto for well over a decade now, at least since I decided to finally start living my own life, not someone else’s dream. All while dealing with the messiness of life that for me means autistic traits, anxiety, generational trauma, marriage and divorce, and having to reinvent myself, by myself, in a country I’m not even a citizen of yet.

I’m terrified of something, often lots of things, every day, and I’ve come to accept that if I want to get anywhere, do anything, experience joy and make any sort of progress, I have to experience the fear and do the thing regardless.

To hold myself accountable, here are some pictures where you can actually see my face. Yep, that scares me too. Not having a face, but showing it

Sometimes life happens and things don’t go as planned, right? That’s what happened to us this week when we realized, after hours of troubleshooting, emails and phone calls to the support team, that our account on the Colorado Gives Day page has glitched and won’t be operational for today’s giving event.

So, in the spirit of giving season, we’re posting our own fundraiser across our social media platforms and website instead. Your contribution, big or small, to Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy is greatly appreciated.

What specifically are we fundraising for? A chute (used bucking chute). Ewww, why? No we’re not going to be bucking wild horses. Those chutes are tall and sturdy and will help us provide emergency medical care to Mustangs that are not yet ready to be approached by us and/or our vets. It will enable us to remove halters that are on too tight if a wild horse comes in with one, and to administer antibiotics and other needed medication to wild ones that won’t yet stand for an injection.

A chute will be a much needed asset to our program and another important step as we continue to strive for excellence in how we are able to care for the wild horses we take in for gentling. We would like to purchase a horse-safe used chute in 2023 and are starting to save up for it now. Have one or know of one for sale? Let us know!

Here’s how you can help:

Via Venmo: @wildhorseoutreachadvocacy

Via PayPal: paypal.me/wildhorseoutreachWHO or stefanie@wildhorseoutreach.org

Via our website: www.wildhorseoutreach.org

Via mail:

Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy

PO Box 113 Guffey, Colorado 80820

Amazon wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/276Y41TKY2YFM

Chewy wishlist: https://www.chewy.com/g/wild-horse-outreach-advocacy_b104370783

If you shop on Amazon you can sign in via Amazon Smile and select Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy as the charity you want to support. Amazon donates a portion of the proceeds at no cost to you!

Via our online store: https://www.bonfire.com /store/wild-horse-outreach-advocacy/

2023 WHOA Calendars are in and ready to be shipped in time for the holidays. PM or email us at info@wildhorseoutreach.org to order yours. All proceeds go towards caring for the Mustangs.

Pictured: A tender moment captured between Ambassador Mustangs Tiny (left) and Lacy. Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, EIN #84-4045358.

#wildhorses #mustangs #wildhorseswillingpartners #wildtowilling #mustanggentling #givingseason #nonprofit #makingmountainmustangmemories

My Thanksgiving week looked like this: A chilly, scenic and exhilarating pack trip into one of the magical canyons in the Colorado prairie, with Ambassador Mustangs Lacy (7yo, Divide Basin, WY) as my saddle horse and Tiny (15yo, Salt Wells, WY) packing camp in and out, and ponied during day rides out of camp. The Shepherd brothers Denali and Ranger were also along for the ride and enjoyed country that’s so different than what they are used to.

On each trip we meet people who inevitably ask about the horses, comment on how beautiful, friendly and well-behaved they are. Each time those asking are astonished when they hear that the horses they are petting are Mustangs, learn more about their stories and about the process of adopting and gentling once wild horses.

That, too, is advocacy. That, too, is outreach. We need to do more than just preach to the choir. I can tell Mustang lovers all day long that Mustangs are great. They’re going to nod and go pet the 5 they already own or look at the photo of a wild horse on the range they have hanging on their wall.

We need to reach people who don’t know about Mustangs and their potential as amazing partners, and help those who have doubts about the “broom-tailed, jug-headed range rats” we so love, see what these horses can look like and accomplish. We need to show the broader horse community and future horse people what they are missing by not having a once wild horse in their lives.

We also, desperately, need more than just homes for wild or barely gentled Mustangs. What we need more of are Mustangs that are out there being ambassadors for their kind, living testaments to what we are trying to explain, because words can only do so much.

That is one of the reasons we do what we do: Demos and workshops, teaching our volunteers how to understand and help gentle wild horses, hand pick adopters to match the personalities and talents of the Mustangs we gentle so that they can have a wonderful life together, and get our Ambassador Mustangs out there for people to see first-hand what a once wild horse is capable of.

Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy is 100% committed to the Mustangs we take in. We give our very best to not just the big, colorful, young, easy, “desirable” ones. We work just as hard to support the “plain”, abused, “difficult”, small, and older wildies and the many, many Mustangs who do not carry the now so widely popular freezebrand.

Did you know that Forest Service and reservation Mustangs are usually not branded at all and therefore at greater risk of falling through the cracks if they end up in a bad spot? In our opinion, their lives and futures are just as important as those of the branded wild ones. Our newest Ambassador herd member is DG Petrie, not pictured here, a 2yo unbranded Devil’s Garden Mustang gathered last year from the Modoc National Forest in California. She is just as amazing as her freezebranded friends, and will help us increase awareness for unbranded Mustangs.

If this resonates with you and you want to support our mission:

It is Giving Tuesday, and it is giving season on Meta (Facebook, Instagram).

Meta is honoring recurring donations with their match this year. If you sign up for recurring donations between now and 12/31/22 (by clicking the Donate button on our Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy (WHOA) page on Facebook or Instagram), they will match up to 100% of your donations after the second month. What a great opportunity to double your impact!

WHOA is a 501(c)3 charitable organization registered with the IRS and the Colorado Secretary of state.

Other ways you can contribute:

Via Venmo: @wildhorseoutreachadvocacy

Via PayPal:

paypal.me/wildhorseoutreachWHO or stefanie@wildhorseoutreach.org

Via the Donate button our website: www.wildhorseoutreach.org

Via mail:

Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy

PO Box 113

Guffey, Colorado 80820

Amazon wishlist:https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/276Y41TKY2YFM

Chewy wishlist: https://www.chewy.com/…/wild-horse-outreach-advocacy…

If you’re shopping on Amazon this cyber week/holiday season (or anytime), you can sign in via Amazon Smile and select Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy as the charity you want to support. Amazon donates a portion of the proceeds at no cost to you!

Via our online store: https://www.bonfire.com/store/wild-horse-outreach-advocacy/

2023 WHOA Calendars are in and ready to be shipped in time for the holidays. Stay tuned for a post on those. All funds raised go directly to the Mustangs in our care.

We’re near the end of another crazy year (Where did the time go anyway?), an opportunity to reflect, to plan and, most importantly, to be grateful

Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy (WHOA) obtained its 501(c)3 nonprofit status at the end of 2019, right before the start of COVID. We’ve been growing through a pandemic and everything the world has been facing since, through shutdowns and resource shortages, despite exploding fuel, feed and equipment prices.

It’s been scary and uncertain at times and yet here we are. A quick count last night showed that we have housed and helped 37 Mustangs so far this year. If the upcoming pick up from Cañon City still happens in 2022, that’ll make it an even 40. That is huge for our organization, and for each of the once wild horses we were lucky enough to get to know.

They were Mustangs we gentled through the TIP program, as well as on behalf of individuals and organizations. Nearly half of them WHOA took in at our own cost and risk, committed to doing what it would take to help them learn to no longer be afraid and to place them into loving, suitable, long-term homes.

Most of this year’s branded Mustangs had been (mis)handled before arriving here, then dumped at auction, sometimes passed around many times before coming to us. Some bounced back better than others from the trauma they had experienced. Most of them did come around.

We had some especially challenging TIP horses that we kept until just the right homes came along. We currently have a reservation Mustang here for gentling, recently gelded, who will be looking for a wonderful home very soon.

We adopted 10 Devils Garden Mustangs from our friends at Double Devil Wild Horse Corrals , a huge undertaking for us, both logistically and financially. They were Sale Authority horses who had been passed over at several adoption events. 10 unbranded (the Forest Service is not currently branding their Mustangs) mostly bay and brown horses, all on the smaller side. They deserved a chance to be gentled and find loving homes. 8 of them have successfully been placed already. DG Petrie has joined our Ambassador herd. 3yo DG Peanut, pictured, has been the most shy one of them all and will stay with us until she, too, is ready to find a home where she can thrive and feel safe with her person.

We taught workshops and did demos, all with the goal of helping people learn more about Mustangs in the wild, in holding, at the gentling stage and what they are capable of with continued training, and to empower participants to become better horsemen and -women.

Yesterday I wrote a check for over $11,000. The second one in 3 months. That’s what it currently costs us to bring in a semi load of high quality hay for the wild ones in our care. We all – our staff and dedicated volunteers , our donors, friends, partners and supporters – worked so hard to make this possible.

I’m proud of our organization, the many amazing people behind it, and the growth we have seen over even just the past year: More pens, two new round pens, bigger, taller and safer pens, more obstacles for the horses to learn on, wonderful volunteers who help with the care and training of the Mustangs, better, kinder, more effective training methods, and Tay Martin ‘s ever-increasing ability to efficiently manage feeding, watering, pen cleaning, repairs and improvements, work with other staff and volunteers, while somehow remaining cheerful and excited about everything we do, whether it’s 85 degrees or 10, 50mph winds or snowing a foot per hour. Her dedication frees me up to train, teach, create content, learn, and make and maintain important connections.

Tomorrow, 11/29/2022, is Giving Tuesday. It would mean the world to me personally, to our organization as a whole and to the horses we are responsible for and will be bringing in in the coming months, if you considered us in your year-end giving. We literally cannot do what we do without the support of kind and generous humans.

Links on how and where to donate and contribute will be posted here later today and again as as reminder tomorrow. Meta (Facebook, Instagram) is honoring recurring donations with their match this year. If you sign up for recurring donations between now and 12/31/22 (by clicking the Donate button on our WHOA page on Facebook or Instagram), they will match up to 100% of your donations after the second month. What a great opportunity to double your impact!

Sending love to all,

Stefanie

*Ways you can contribute:

Via Venmo: @wildhorseoutreachadvocacy

Via PayPal:

paypal.me/wildhorseoutreachWHO or stefanie@wildhorseoutreach.org

Via the Donate button our website: www.wildhorseoutreach.org

Via mail:

Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy

PO Box 113

Guffey, Colorado 80820

Amazon wishlist:https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/276Y41TKY2YFM

Chewy wishlist: https://www.chewy.com/…/wild-horse-outreach-advocacy…

If you’re shopping on Amazon this cyber week/holiday season (or anytime), you can sign in via Amazon Smile and select Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy as the charity you want to support. Amazon donates a portion of the proceeds at no cost to you!

Via our online store: https://www.bonfire.com/store/wild-horse-outreach-advocacy/

2023 WHOA Calendars are in and ready to be shipped in time for the holidays. Stay tuned for a post on those. All funds raised go directly to the Mustangs in our care.*

Photo: Eye to eye with DG Peanut

Packing into the backcountry with horses is grounding, beautiful, exciting…and an entirely different way of life.

As a morning person, I wake up between 4 and 5am. At that time it’s dark and chilly in the high country, outside of my cocoon of sleeping bag liner, sleeping bag and sometimes lined duster for additional warmth.

So I lie there, enjoying the residual warmth of the previous night’s hand and toe warmers, listening to what’s going on outside the tent… Is it windy? Raining, snowing perhaps? Are the horses still sleeping? More often than not, the sound of nature at night is a fascinating, deep silence.

I contemplate reading for a bit and sometimes I do, depending on how early and how cold it is. I have a book, headlamp and a solar lamp always within reach. And a knife to cut rope if the horses were to get into a bind.

At first light – not sunrise, literally as soon as the sky turns from total darkness to pre-dawn grey – I extract myself from my sleeping bag, sometimes eagerly, other times less so, like when it’s 16 degrees (F) and my hands get cold just thinking about leaving my tent. The sound of me moving around wakes up first the dogs inside the tent, then the horses on the highline.

I put on my coat, dodging dog tails and wet noses, and pull on my boots before I open the tent flap. I assess weather conditions based on whether dew drops, rain or ice flakes fall from my tent as I open it and the dogs storm out to play. The horses are now starting to stomp, knowing they’re about to be turned loose to graze.

The next 20 minutes are consumed by releasing horses, feeding dogs, then getting the horses’ grain ready. They know the routine and, even hobbled, make a B-line for their nosebags. In between I take time to look around, ready for the sky to turn from grey to the subtle reds and blues indicating imminent sunrise, and waiting for the first light to hit the surrounding mountains.

Then it’s time to make coffee and wander around, admiring dewy or frosty plants and leaves. For the next few hours, it’s all about breakfast and warming up. During this slow part of the day, there’s ample opportunity to observe the animals and nature as it wakes up and the sun (hopefully) starts to warm the backs of horses, dogs and humans alike.

Sometimes there’s time before the day’s ride to watch marmots while drinking coffee and reading a book as the horses and dogs, content with their bellies filled, nap and soak in the warmth on a bright and now less crisp mountain morning. That’s what packing is all about.

When we first started discussing the idea to bring pairs to Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy to gentle and adopt out, we got a lot of feedback along the lines of “I don’t recommend it, those wild mares can be aggressive when they have a foal at their side”. Figuring that we wouldn’t have a super tight timeline since we planned to wean the foals prior to adoption, and would work with the mares and foals in such a way as to minimize stress, we adopted two mare and foal pairs from the Double Devil Wild Horse Corrals : Peanut (3yo) & Pumpkin (now 5mo old), pictured here, and Hazel (5yo) & Juniper (currently 4mo old).

We gave them some time to settle in and started gentling them during the most recent private gentling workshop I taught two weeks ago. These pictures are from their fourth session and we’re beyond impressed with both of their progress

Our process for sorting and working with them: Sort as quietly as possible, separating the pair. Our gentling pen is in between the alley way and round pen. While mom is in the gentling pen, the baby can be in the alley way, just a few feet from mom. They can see each other, sniff and nicker to one another.

I keep sessions short, around 30min. The mare goes from the gentling pen into the round pen where a bucket of loose grass alfalfa mix hay awaits. She usually eats out of a slow feeder net, so loose hay is a nice treat. Baby trots willingly into the gentling pen to be closer to mom. They are still fence to fence. Eye contact is limited due to privacy fence along the round pen wall. During the first couple of sessions Peanut would come over frequently to peek underneath the panel and check on Pumpkin. Since then she enjoys her quiet time with the hay bucket while the little guy is in ‘school’.

Once school is out, we open the gate to the round pen and baby wanders over to mom who keeps munching, hits the milk bar and calmly follows her back into their pen. Observing increasing levels of relaxation and confidence has been very encouraging. I prefer gradual, step-by-step weaning over the “poof, gone” alternative as I believe it’s less stressful for both mares and foals, and these two are taking very well to having a little bit of time away from each other.

I work with them individually the way I work with the others as well and they are progressing just as nicely as their fellow Devil’s Garden Mustangs here for gentling. Four sessions in they can be caught and haltered, have started to move hips, shoulders, rib cage, give to pressure, back up, lead, been introduced to stick, stick and string, hand, brushes and stand for fly spray.

Peanut and Pumpkin will be looking for homes once gentled and he has been gelded and weaned. Pumpkin is a red-headed colt with a little sass and a great mind. He loves scratches and is going to be a big, stout boy. Peanut is a soft-eyed mare, smart, and looking for a human to give her the confidence to navigate our world. They are microchipped, not branded as is customary for wild horses coming from the U.S. Forest Service / U.S. Forest Service-Modoc National Forest

We have one more pair to start gentling here shortly.

If you’re interested in adopting or a participating in a private or semi-private gentling workshop, to learn about Mustangs, Mustang gentling and improve your horsemanship, send us a PM or email us at info@wildhorseoutreach.org

Custom rope tack made by Rowdy’s Ropes . Thank you Nancy for all the pretty colors, great materials and custom designs that set us up for success and help keep the Mustangs safe!

The flat braid cotton ring rope (lunge line with altered hardware) works great as a neck rope and interim halter and was a suggestion from Mustang Matt Horse Trainer and Elisa Wilson (don’t check out Elisa’s page if you don’t like gorgeous Mustangs and amazing leather work).

A quick ride to check cows on the forest after a day of gentling wild horses turned into a spectacular light show.

It was 4yo Devil’s Garden Mustang gelding DG Littlefoot’s first “big boy” ride, saddled and being ridden the entire 8 1/2 miles rather than sharing the workload with 7yo Divide Basin Mustang mare Lacy (dun). The young bay gelding took to it in stride, without any buddy sourness or excitement. Better yet, he carried a rider he was unfamiliar with for the first 6 miles until we swapped horses, through a storm rolling in, with wind gusts and flying hats, without ever batting an eye. For the final leg of the ride I ponied Blaze off of him. He made some unsure ear movements the first two minutes, then continued trucking right along with the older, much more assertive gelding in tow. That’s what bringing young horses along under saddle is all about. With a solid foundation there’s no need for a rodeo.

This ride was also DG Blaze’s first outing since arriving at Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy a few days prior. I gentled the now 10yo golden buckskin branded Devil’s Garden Mustang gelding back in 2019 through the TIP program. Blaze has the stallion look and battle scars from growing to maturity in the wild paired with an amazing disposition. Since his adoption he has been a pack and riding horse for a friend of mine who recently needed to rehome Blaze due to health reasons. The gelding has had the winter off and we are now easing him back into work.

Ponying is a great step in doing that so long as the horse being ponied has a basic understanding of leading and giving to pressure and you have a good enough handle on the horse you’re ponying off of to only need one hand in most situations. You have to be able to shut down any fights between two horses that might not know each other or not usually be that close to one another.

Once the initial ground work is done and we have established the basics of a relationship, pony, pack and ground drive are the steps I take before I ride a horse, even one that just needs a refresher. I’m a few years past the “looks like a horse, sure I’ll get on” stage. Breaking the process down into steps is so much easier for the horse too and gives them and me the chance to get to know one another better as we navigate the prep work together.

DG Littlefoot’s Best Ever Pads was kindly sponsored by Horse Show Mom , a wonderful, small horsewoman-owned business.

Tesla, 5yo Warm Springs, OR Mustang gelding has been an interesting one to work with. Not because he’s a “bad” horse but because of the baggage he carries. He has been bounced around several times, including a trip to auction, before his current owner got him. Various unsuccessful attempts to gentle the gorgeous bay gelding have left their mark and made this horse, for lack of a better word, angry.

When he first came he was nervous, unsettled and would protect his face with evasion, teeth and front feet. His eyes were hard and his muzzle distorted with tension. Thankfully he arrived here just in time for our workshop with Mustang Matt Horse Trainer last month and it took Matt’s mad haltering skills and willingness to quite literally put his life on the line to get this traumatized horse headed in a better direction.

Fast forward a little over a month and the hardness in Tesla’s face is mostly gone. He’s still worried and I can’t say I blame him. You don’t just wipe away years of trauma and start fresh. This is the beginning of his un- and re-learning process and I’m proud of him.

What has been fascinating to me is that Tesla is basically two different horses. The one that gets alarmed over anything near his head, and the one that enjoys touch everywhere else and loves to sniff and explore his surroundings when we walk together, that’s willing, brave and soft. The conclusion Matt and I came to was that the second one is the “real” Tesla, whereas the first one is a mask he has learned to wear out of a perceived need to defend himself.

When he first got here, he couldn’t stand still and was ready to eat anything that came near his face. That was concerning until I discovered somewhat by accident that the one thing that calmed him down was… touch. I’d rub him with the stick and he’d settle down as if it helped him come back to the present moment and into his body. Not that different with human trauma survivors. That’s why weighted blankets and hugs (even butterfly hugs we encourage them to practice on themselves) can have a soothing effect on an overstimulated nervous system.

I was concerned about how Tesla and I would get along when Matt left. He was (and still can be) a lot of horse. With time we figured each other out. It’s taken a variety of tools and methods to get him to this point (not shown here but he loads, was a good boy when his human mom came to visit him, and has had an acutherapy treatment with Maya Suzuki LAc (ShinKyu University). A horse like Tesla is a good reminder that we can’t ever have too many tools in our toolbox, and that teamwork really does make the dream work, in this case Bree Thompson ‘s dream to keep this guy safe, be able to touch and care for him, and hopefully one day make a riding horse out of him.

Overview of approaches used: positive and negative reinforcement, shaping (successive approximations), targeting, counter conditioning and CAT-H. We did actively correct behaviors that are dangerous to humans and land horses in bad places, e.g. lunging at people and objects, biting and striking.