The mustang horse is America’s famous wild horse, descended from Colonial Spanish horses, they were first brought over to North America with the arrival of Cortés in Mexico in the year 1519 where the Native American’s soon adopted them into their lifestyle. By 1686 there was a stable Spanish horse population in what is now Texas. As more exploration was conducted, some horses were let go and left to take care of themselves and others strayed away.
This led to the now feral or “wild” horses forming thriving herds where they rapidly reproduced and spread. Although there is no exact recorded number of wild horses at any point prior to the 20th century, most sources state that there were “millions” of wild horses in America at one point.
Over the following centuries, a number of events such as wars and overpopulation of wild horses impacted their population; specifically, the rounding up of wild horses for the Spanish-American War and World War I. In 1930 the estimated number of wild horses was between 50,000 to 150,000, most of which were living on General Land Office (GLO) land and 11 states’ national forest rangelands. The population then dropped down to around 25,000 due to cruel capture methods, which led to the first federal free-roaming horse protection law in 1959.
The BLM (Bureau of Land Management) has established areas where wild horses are allowed to roam free. As of 2018 there are 71,892 wild horses which is exceeding the BLM AML (Appropriate Management Levels) by more than 61,000 horses, a number of these excess wild horses are captured to later be adopted.
Since 1978 captured horses have been offered by the BLM to anyone interested for their own personal use, training or training competitions such as the well-known and highly competitive TV program “Mustang Millionaire” and smaller scale events known as the TIP (Trainer Incentive Program), which was created by the Mustang Heritage Foundation.
In the early spring of 2019, a well-known trainer and professional trick-rider with the Dynamite Dames and also one of the original co-leaders of the Phoenix Riders Drill team here in Blanco, Ginger Duke began work on hosting a TIP competition of her own. As someone who has competed in numerous high-level mustang competitions, she wanted to give other interested people the opportunity to adopt and train a mustang. My younger sister, Izzie, and I were instantly interested in this opportunity, especially as we had been hearing a lot about this event as we have ridden and trained with Ginger and the Dynamite Dames and have been riding and training our horses for the majority of our lives.
This TIP challenge is called the “Texas TIP Challenge” which has the end-goal of a competition August 23-25, 2019 at the Young County Arena in Graham, Texas. Each competitor will be competing with their horses in-hand and on the ground, displaying the horses necessary in-hand skills as well as tricks. At the end of the competition, winners will be selected and then there will be a horse reassignment by the BLM for the trainers who choose to rehome their horses. The horses can be adopted for an adoption and training fee. Those who decide to not adopt out their horses will be eligible for a couple other out of state competitions.
The first task was to fill out a couple of applications; one that had to be sent in to the MHF (Mustang Heritage Foundation) for them to approve or decline adopters and one other. Once this was done and the majority of competitors had been accepted, they were sent a list of approximately 70 horses. The horses were sorted by yearlings, geldings and mares, and the info on each horse consisted only of their tag number, color, facial and leg markings, as well as age. From there each person chose their top eight horses and sent their tag numbers in to Ginger.
The youth competitors were only allowed to compete with yearlings or two-year olds, and Izzie and I were both planning to adopt yearlings. Izzie ended up with her third choice: a thinly built, bay gelding. However, due to some confusion during the process and the fact that I had just recently bought another training horse, I decided against entering, even though I had already been accepted. My mother, on the other hand, had another idea and as a surprise she went through the list and selected the last yearling available, #8592, a stockily built, sorrel gelding.
The next step was taking the trip up to a BLM holding facility in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma which is a six-hour drive from here in Blanco. We took the trip May 31st and June 1st. After paying each horse’s $15-dollar adoption fee and filling out some paperwork, to my surprise we picked up two, rather than one mustang; both Ginger and my mom made sure to get this surprise on video.
Our next destination was a training facility that Ginger had set up at her dad’s house in Weatherford, Texas, which is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Pauls Valley.
Once we arrived there, we went straight to work and with help from experienced mustang trainer, Cavin Graham, we began the gentling process. The gentling process is a crucial step in training a wild mustang as they have spent years roaming wild and never being touched or handled in anyway by a human; the same goes for their whole bloodline.
Horses are what we call fight or flight animals, meaning they deal with situations that they perceive as dangerous in one of two ways: fight or flight. Mustangs instinctively view us as being dangerous, and they do what they think is best and engage their “flight” reflex.
The first step in the gentling process is to gain their trust and reduce this flight instinct by slowly breaking down their personal space bubble. This is done by slowly approaching them until they turn to look at you curiously and at that point taking a step back to take the pressure off of them and give some of their personal space back. This is continued until the initial 15-foot space bubble is broken down to just a few feet which can take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours.
After that there are several other training steps, all of which help the horse to gain your trust and eventually allow you to touch and pet them. By the end of around two-to-three hours of working with my horse, he was allowing me to pet him, lead him around the small pen, pick up his two front feet and load into a trailer. The next few hours were spent by Izzie working with her horse, who she had decided to name “Exver” and by the end of their training session she was able to lead, pet and load him into a trailer.
The next day, we headed home. I finally decided to name my gelding “Vegas”, which I believe to be pretty fitting as he is very smart, but just as stubborn.
Both horses have calmed down immensely and at this point can both do all of the following: lead, work on a lunge line, load and unload from a trailer, be fly-sprayed, have all four feet picked up and cleaned, walk over a tarp, step up onto a platform, be bathed, be “ponied,” or led from another horse, go swimming in a pond, stand tied and be groomed all over. They have both come very far and we’re excited to see where each of them will go!
