Mustangs in training for competition
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Three wild mustangs arrived at the West Georgia Riding Academy in Roopville a week ago skittish and pretty beat up from their first taste of captivity, but Drew Olsen and his girlfriend Kelsey Lambert plan on placing them in competition in October.
“You’ve got to be their friend,” Olsen said. “It just takes a long time to get over the fear.”
The only contact the mustangs have had with humans up to this point has been frightening – their capture, shots, gelding – all have led the horses to mistrust their new trainers. That makes them nervous and stubborn, Lambert said.
“They really haven’t had any positive reinforcement from humans,” she said.
With domesticated horses, the training can begin immediately but with the wild horses, they have to make friends first.
Olsen and Lambert will spend about an hour everyday for the next four months gaining the trust of the animals and training them. To compete, the mustangs have to accept a rider and maneuver a course set up at the Extreme Mustang Makeover in Murphreesboro, Tenn.
Olsen and Lambert are required to teach the horses specific skills, such as lying down, walking, trotting, cantering and pivoting 360 degrees to the right and left. But the trainers also train the horses to do some more imaginative stunts. One of the winners of last year’s competition rode the mustang in the back of a moving pick up truck, another trainer rode through a ring of fire, Olsen said. He’s not sure what stunt he might train his horses to do, but he’s planning something good, he said.
This is Olsen’s second year participating in the competition, which is sponsored by the Mustang Heritage Foundation and the Bureau of Land Management. Last year, his mustang was injured, but he still managed to train it and place 14th in the competition. This year, he picked up two horses to hedge his bets.
“Because mine last year was lame the last two months, so I decided that this would double my chances,” Olsen said with a laugh. “If I get one that’s crippled or crazy then I have a backup horse.”
After watching Olsen train the mustang last year, Lambert decided to try her hand at it this year so they picked up a horse for her, too.
Olsen heard about the competition through an advertisement in a magazine and decided to give it a try. He will be competing for $20,000 in prizes, which is part of the incentive. But it’s only part of the reason Olsen wanted to participate.
“It’s kind of a challenge,” he said. “It’s a good cause, too.”
The horses that are trained and shown at the competition are put up for auction afterward. As a trainer, he’ll get $500 for the training and a percentage of the purchase price, but the majority of the money is used to support the mission of the Mustang Heritage Foundation, to increase the number of adoptions of mustangs.
According to the foundation’s Web site, the horses provided to the trainers are some of the 30,000 mustangs that were removed from the wild by the Bureau of Land Management and now roam managed ranges in 10 states. There are approximately another 33,000 horses running free, about 5,700 more than the BLM says there should be for an environmentally-balanced population. The horses have virtually no natural predators in the wild and double their herd sizes every four years. That means the BLM must remove thousands of the horses from the wild each year. The adoptions help the BLM control the population of wild horses in a humane way.
There are competitions all over the country. In 2009, 11 events are scheduled. About four months before the scheduled competition, 3- and 4-year-old horses, all geldings tattooed with a number and symbol, are randomly paired with a participating trainer. Then in 100 days, the trainers head to the event grounds to show off their training.
The competition is designed to show the viability of the horses as trail or pleasure horses.
“By demonstrating the ability of a Mustang to be an athlete and nurturing companion, the Foundation is successfully helping the Bureau of Land Management reposition some of the nearly 30,000 wild horses available for adoption,” the Web site explains.
After training one, Olsen knows the mustangs are just like any other horse. He’s been around horses his whole life – his mother was a trainer and he’s been training for six years on his own through his business Southern Horsemanship.
“After you get over the fear, and you get to handling them and they get accustomed to people, they’re pretty much like dealing with a normal horse,” he said.
“You’ve got to be their friend,” Olsen said. “It just takes a long time to get over the fear.”
The only contact the mustangs have had with humans up to this point has been frightening – their capture, shots, gelding – all have led the horses to mistrust their new trainers. That makes them nervous and stubborn, Lambert said.
“They really haven’t had any positive reinforcement from humans,” she said.
With domesticated horses, the training can begin immediately but with the wild horses, they have to make friends first.
Olsen and Lambert will spend about an hour everyday for the next four months gaining the trust of the animals and training them. To compete, the mustangs have to accept a rider and maneuver a course set up at the Extreme Mustang Makeover in Murphreesboro, Tenn.
Olsen and Lambert are required to teach the horses specific skills, such as lying down, walking, trotting, cantering and pivoting 360 degrees to the right and left. But the trainers also train the horses to do some more imaginative stunts. One of the winners of last year’s competition rode the mustang in the back of a moving pick up truck, another trainer rode through a ring of fire, Olsen said. He’s not sure what stunt he might train his horses to do, but he’s planning something good, he said.
This is Olsen’s second year participating in the competition, which is sponsored by the Mustang Heritage Foundation and the Bureau of Land Management. Last year, his mustang was injured, but he still managed to train it and place 14th in the competition. This year, he picked up two horses to hedge his bets.
“Because mine last year was lame the last two months, so I decided that this would double my chances,” Olsen said with a laugh. “If I get one that’s crippled or crazy then I have a backup horse.”
After watching Olsen train the mustang last year, Lambert decided to try her hand at it this year so they picked up a horse for her, too.
Olsen heard about the competition through an advertisement in a magazine and decided to give it a try. He will be competing for $20,000 in prizes, which is part of the incentive. But it’s only part of the reason Olsen wanted to participate.
“It’s kind of a challenge,” he said. “It’s a good cause, too.”
The horses that are trained and shown at the competition are put up for auction afterward. As a trainer, he’ll get $500 for the training and a percentage of the purchase price, but the majority of the money is used to support the mission of the Mustang Heritage Foundation, to increase the number of adoptions of mustangs.
According to the foundation’s Web site, the horses provided to the trainers are some of the 30,000 mustangs that were removed from the wild by the Bureau of Land Management and now roam managed ranges in 10 states. There are approximately another 33,000 horses running free, about 5,700 more than the BLM says there should be for an environmentally-balanced population. The horses have virtually no natural predators in the wild and double their herd sizes every four years. That means the BLM must remove thousands of the horses from the wild each year. The adoptions help the BLM control the population of wild horses in a humane way.
There are competitions all over the country. In 2009, 11 events are scheduled. About four months before the scheduled competition, 3- and 4-year-old horses, all geldings tattooed with a number and symbol, are randomly paired with a participating trainer. Then in 100 days, the trainers head to the event grounds to show off their training.
The competition is designed to show the viability of the horses as trail or pleasure horses.
“By demonstrating the ability of a Mustang to be an athlete and nurturing companion, the Foundation is successfully helping the Bureau of Land Management reposition some of the nearly 30,000 wild horses available for adoption,” the Web site explains.
After training one, Olsen knows the mustangs are just like any other horse. He’s been around horses his whole life – his mother was a trainer and he’s been training for six years on his own through his business Southern Horsemanship.
“After you get over the fear, and you get to handling them and they get accustomed to people, they’re pretty much like dealing with a normal horse,” he said.
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