Category: Stefanie’s Notebook

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

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 …

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If you’re scared to do something… Do it scared

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 …

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It’s #ColoradoGivesDay !

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 …

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The many faces of wild horse advocacy… Helping Mustangs by showing what they are capable of and inspiring adopters to keep working towards their dreams

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 …

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What we do and how you can help

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 …

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Mornings in camp… Coffee with marmots

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. …

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Gentling mare & foal pairs

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 …

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Riding under a storm cloudy sky

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 …

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Tesla – a lesson in patience and an opportunity to combine approaches

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 …

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