Tag: Horse Trainer

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Mustang Story #6: Can an 8yr old train a wild Mustang?

Eliza is the youngest of us three Steffen sisters. On first impression she seems to be shy and quiet…but don’t let her fool you! She is absolutely fearless and keeps up with us older sisters without any issue. At the age of 8yrs old she was determined to join her sisters in competing in the MYWY Mustang Madness Program. She begged my parents but was met with some resistance…was an 8yr old child training a wild yearling a good idea? Eliza, not taking “no” as an answer, took the matter up with higher authority…God. Every night in our family prayers Eliza would add “please let my parents let me get a Mustang”🙏 Week after week she continued to pray and eventually my parents gave their permission! She was so excited✨ And is now a firm believer in answered prayers😅

Every little girls dream pony is a palomino, so of course, Eliza choose a delicate little palomino yearling and named her “Princess”.

Princess was very sweet but also a bit opinionated (much like her trainer😜) so there was definitely some bumps throughout the training process. When the competition rolled around, Eliza and Princess were ready! If you ever attend a Mustang competition be sure to watch the Youth Division. It is the most entertaining part of the whole event😆 Little kids dragging yearling Mustangs around elaborate trails courses and showmanship patterns is the absolute best! Neither horse, nor kid, know where they are supposed to be going and it typically is absolute mayhem. Here’s a typical class: Kid weaves cones. Mustang sees cone and decides to try eating it. Kid takes cone out of mouth and returns to original location. Mustang, now bored, grabs kids hat and attempts to eat that… and the process continues😆

Eliza though the youngest in her age division (8yr to 14yrs) put in a couple very nice rounds, including an absolutely adorable freestyle routine😍

She was rewarded with “Reserve Champion”✨ Not too shabby for being 8yrs old!

And the coolest part is Princess, now called “Snowflake” now lives with the same family who bought Marissa’s yearling, Elsie! Together they get to go on fun riding adventures and have grown into beautiful horses💜

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Mustang Story #5: Never under-estimate the plain brown yearlings!

For some reason Marissa has always been drawn to the plain brown horses with spicy personalities. Put a flashy horse with lots of chrome next to a chestnut mare and she will always go for the chestnut mare. The 2021 MYWY Mustang Madness Competition was no exception. Despite the pool of stunning pintos, blacks and palominos, Marissa singled out a completely brown yearling without even a speck of white and instantly fell head over heels in love💖 It was no use trying to convince her to adopt one of the “flashy” babies. The brown yearling was coming home.

This yearling, Marissa named Elsie, was a sensitive and flighty baby, running about the corral crashing into panels. Marissa with her calm, easygoing demeanor quickly earned her trust and slowly introduced Elsie to the wonders of domestic horse life.

Elsie was very light and a quick learner, giving Marissa the opportunity to teach her advanced maneuvers on the ground, while making her cues almost invisible.

Prep for the competition was going great… until Elsie developed a horrible case of warts😷 We tried everything to get them to heal. But nothing worked. Just a few short weeks before the competition, we were desperate for a solution and our vet came and removed them surgically. The old timers swear by feeding the warts…so we made Elsie eat them…We were all gagging in disgust🤢 but Elsie didn’t seem to mind as it was mixed in with her favorite grain. Were the old timers right? Well, the warts didn’t come back and we made it to the competition… So you decide💁‍♀️

Removing warts

The competition was a whirl wind of ups and downs but Marissa secured a spot in the top 10 freestyle finals and put on a show-stopping woodland fairy showcase🦄💃

Elsie, now known as, Babe lives with Suzette Maiden’s wonderful family.

Here is snippet from her latest update: “Babe has become such an amazing horse. We go trail riding and just riding around town. She is my horse that I am comfortable with putting inexperienced riders on and she will treat them with so much care. She is my sweetheart and this year she is going to start a new exciting journey of learning to pull a sleigh for next winter. I am so lucky to have her in my life!” – Suzette Maiden (Elsie’s New Owner)

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Mustang Story #3: The 8yr old chestnut mare…did I make the right choice?

Year 2020

We were not planning on getting two….

If you read yesterday’s Mustang story then you already know we adopted a Mustang on the BLM Online Wild Horse Corral. At the beginning of the auction I was drawn to a big 8yr old Chestnut mare (I know there are a lot of red flags here …age…color…mare..but I was only 15yrs old and didn’t know any better😅). We were quickly outbid and we moved on to other horses. But a few days later we were contacted saying that the “winner” of the chestnut mare had “passed” (I didn’t know this was possible on an auction) and we had the new WINNING bid. This sent us all into a head spin…could we adopt a second Mustang?!? We desperately tried to think things through using sound judgement but our horse crazy brain overpowered any rational thoughts and we decided that “Of course we would adopt her”!

We brought her home and I was so excited to begin training her! She was everything I wanted! Big, stocky and and had the most beautiful blonde mane😍 It was love at first sight…or so I thought. It wasn’t long before I started to realize my mistake of adopting an older chestnut mare. She was sassy and was NOT interested in being domesticated. She also HATED other horses and bent several of my panels kicking at others.

She also wasn’t too keen on the idea of anyone touching her..For 2 weeks I desperately struggled to touch her with no success. After trying everything my sister and I could think of, we were out of ideas… So in a last attempt we decided to try and rope her. We had never roped anything in our entire life so the likely hood of us actually being able to get it around her neck was 1 in 100… We should have known better. By some crazy chance we caught her on the VERY FIRST throw. We were in complete shock and immediately let go of the rope. With all the loose slack the Mustang got both front legs through the lariat and it cinched around her middle…stuck. We started to panic! The rope was old and it took us two entire hours to finally wiggle the rope loose enough for her to get it off from around her middle. Praise God she walked away without any rope burns and we decided roping her was NOT the best strategy…

Eventually, after many long days I was finally able to touch her for the first time. Progress was slow and I made a lot of mistakes but over the course of the next 2yrs she adjusted to domestic life and I even got her going under-saddle. She slowly turned into a solid citizen and started to enjoy time with humans…even sneaking over for scratches and treats. She now lives with a friend of ours and is loving her life and is now almost TOO friendly as she will push on the fence to get just one more scratch💜

I will always be thankful to this beautiful mare for all the lessons she taught me. I can honestly say training this mare was one of the key milestones to my later successes with Mustangs. Whenever I get frustrated, I try to remember that tough horses make better horsemen.

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Mustang Story #1: Our Very First Mustang!

As we are heading into our 6th year of training Mustangs it seemed fitting to take a look back at a few of the super cool Mustangs we have trained💜

It’s been a wild ride and quite the adventure✨

If you have ever met us you have probably met or at least heard us talk about Marissa’s mustang Stardust💫 She is pretty much a family member and we all adore her💜 She was the very 1st Mustang we have ever adopted . Marissa, only 12yrs old the time, read a magazine article about a Mustang training competition for youth and begged my parents to let her participate. Our parents were tentative at first…kids training WILD and CRAZY Mustangs…Was this safe?!? After a few weeks of begging, powerpoint presentations and argumentative essays they eventually agreed🤩 Marissa applied to the MYWY Mustang Madness Competition and was accepted! We were THRILLED!!!

Typically, in the program, youth competitors receive a yearling Mustang to train for 100 day but unfortunately in 2019 there was a shortage of yearlings…so everyone got 2yr olds. We all started shaking a little. We thought we were ONLY having to train a cute baby NOT a massive 2yr old! What had we gotten ourselves into😬

But all of our worries were for nothing because the muddy, 15hh 2yr old that was Marissa’s draw for the competition was the sweetest, most gentle mare you had ever met! It was only a few days after bringing her home that Marissa and this Mustang had a special connection💕

Morning Snuggles

Over the next 100 days this Mustang, who Marissa named Stardust, captivated every one of our hearts and it was no surprise when after the competition that we decided to keep Stardust💖

Now, 6yrs later, Stardust is still the #1 horse on our farm and continues to captivate the hearts of everyone she meets!

She is an INCREDIBLE trick pony and loves doing liberty and bridle-less demos, is a stellar dressage horse and LOVES to jump. What does the future hold for this awesome Mustang? The hope and goal is to continue improving her Dressage and jumping and see just how far she can go in eventing…who knows you could just see her in a 3* one day!

#blmmustang #wildmustang #horses