Tag: Washington State

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Mustang Story #13: From completely WILD to a 4-H Champion!

I’ve never been a big believer in sleep or “down time” so naturally in 2022 I signed up for the Teens And Oregon Mustang Program. Mind you, I was already competing in the “MYWY Mustang Madness” competition with Shania and Peachy Keen so had a total of 3 wild Mustangs I was working everyday…Let’s just say June and July were VERY busy😂

Thankfully God knew I had taken on probably more than I should and granted me the sweetest, most kind, 3yr old as my draw🧡 He was a dun and was a look alike to Peachy Keen, so obviously I named him “Just Peachy” aka “JP”.

No longer a numer!
Meet “Just Peachy”
Twins
Isn’t he handsome!
First Touch!

JP was just the coolest horse! I galloped him down trails, worked cows, I taught him to pull my sister in a raft and I pretty much rode him everywhere! He was a gentlemen from the very beginning and even let my little 9yr old sister ride him and my dad. He was safe, sane and everyone who met him fell in love with his goofy personality!

It was no surprise when JP put on a show stopping performance at the competition and landed “Reserve Champion” with only 1/2 point away from 1st.

But this was just the beginning of JP’s show career! JP, now known as, Tango continues to rock the show world with his new rider, Brooklyn! Together they compete in 4-H and OHSET being amazing ambassadors for the Mustangs🤩

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Mustang Story #12: They Paid Me $500 To Adopt A Mustang!!!

$500 and a new Mustang!?! Sign me up!

The MYWY Mustang Madness Competition was offering a $500 incentive if competitors wanted to adopt and train a 2nd Mustang. If you haven’t noticed, we will take any opportunity to play with another Mustang and it made it a lot easier to convince our dad of yet another Mustang when we explained we were “literally getting PAID to adopt another Mustang”🙃.

During selection my mom fell in love with an exquisite little bay yearling. She was full of life and trotted all about the pen with her head held high and an intelligent look in her eye. Right then and there it was decided that this was going to be my 2nd competition Mustang.

True to her appearance she was EXTREMELY Smart, bold and outgoing. Due to her fiery personality, I named her after my mom and my favorite country music artist Shania Twain🎶

To this day I haven’t had a Mustang that could learn so much in such a short amount of time. She was AWESOME! I spent the summer doing a deep dive into my advanced ground work and was absolutely amazed at what all this little filly learned!

At the competition, Shania absolutely rocked it putting in one of the best performances of my career. She was on FIRE🔥

We secured our spot in the top 10 and into the freestyle competition. I typically am a big prop person when it comes to freestyles, but with Shania, any prop or obstacle I added seemed to take away from her natural beauty and refinement. So, with the help of my sisters and mom, we crafted a freestyle that focused on advanced ground-work maneuvers strung together in such a way that created a beautiful performance, showing off what Shania did best.

You can see it at: https://youtu.be/AmwDqWPSUf0?si=7oGyqZceJlLQdelh

It was a huge success🤩 and landed Shania a “Grand Champion Finish”🥳.

And the best part of all is that Shania now lives with the same AMAZING family that adopted Elsie and Princess, two of our 2021 Mustang yearlings! It was the absolute perfect home for such a remarkable yearling!

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Mustang Story #11: The little yearling with a BIG personality!

Eliza at the mature age of 9 was already training her second wild Mustang for the 2022 MYWY Mustang Madness competition✨

She chose a buckskin yearling with the most crazy wild mane I had ever seen!

This little gelding had a big personality, and thought quite highly of himself. On day 1 he was determined he could make it out of our 6ft panels. Although he was unable, I was impressed with his attempts…luckily he was just a tad too short😅😅

Once he settled in, he and Eliza quickly hit it off and became fast friends. This Mustang was special and with his wild mane and exuberant personality, we knew he needed a good name. We tried naming him Aslan from Narnia as well as after his rockstar look-alike Rod Stewart (They share the same taste in hair styles😆 ) but ultimately Eliza decided to call him “Big Guy”.

Eliza and Big Guy had a great weekend at the competition and Eliza secured her 2nd “Reserve Champion Finish”.

Unable to part with this pretty gelding we ended up keeping him…now 3yrs later, he is the menace of the farm😂 Spoiled rotten! At a whopping 15.3 hands he still thinks he is the baby of the farm deserving all the attention…His current personality reminds us of a teenage boy that refuses to get a job and just drives his poor parents crazy!!! He is now going under-saddle, but will try everything possible to get out of work…straight lines and circles are nearly impossible…. Currently, Eliza rides him daily teaching him how to be a solid and respectable riding horse.

But this year he is in for some big life changes! He is going to enter the work force and be my Dad’s full time trail, jumping and all around riding horse. I’ll keep you updated on how that goes😜

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Mustang Story #10! Is her leg broken?!?

Can you guess what kind of Mustang Marissa picked for the 2022 MYWY competition??? If something brown and fiery popped into your head then you would be absolutely correct😅She chose a completely brown (besides a stripe on her face) 4yr old mare that could gallop circles in a 20 by 20 area with ease. 😳 We were in for another wild ride….

Half-way through our 10hr drive home from the BLM, we noticed her entire front leg was swollen from the shoulder down. Was it broken? Extremely Injured? We couldn’t tell…Upon arriving home, we assessed it the best we could but it wasn’t till the next morning when puss started oozing out that we knew it was an abscess🤢

This brown mare was VERY fiery and also …in pain..a bad combination. To get it to heal, we knew we needed to be able to clean it, so Marissa set to work gentling her. This turned out to be a bit of a challenge. She was aggressive and had a nasty habit of charging you. Marissa stayed the course and eventually won this fiery mare’s trust and respect.

Eventually the abscess healed, and Marissa proceeded to start the mare (known as “Freesia”) under-saddle. She was so athletic and trainable, within 3 months jumping 2’6″ with ease and learning to smile! Maybe our next eventing Mustang?!? The thought of keeping her was exciting… but all the Mustangs in this competition were required to be sold at auction. So we tried to not get our hopes up.

After a fantastic weekend at the competition, receiving Reserve Champion under-saddle🤩, the auction began. The price went right up to our limit…then it stopped. We all held our breath as the auctioneer counted down “going once… twice… SOLD”. We were THRILLED!!!!

It is now 3yrs later and Freesia is a family favorite💜 Marissa does everything on this horse! Need a fill-in horse for your Pony Club rating? Freesia was there!

Need a second horse for your Roman riding endeavors? Freesia can do that too!

How about jumping? Freesia LOVES it and can easily clear 1.10 meters.

Maybe a horse your mom can mosey down the trail on? Freesia also is game for that!

We love this fiery brown mare and couldn’t imagine our family without her!

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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 #4: From Winning The MYWY Mustang Madness Competition To Ranching in Montana!

In 2021, I was accepted into my (Sierra’s) very first MYWY Mustang Madness Competition with a beautiful black yearling.

She was from the Paisley Desert Herd so naturally I named her “Paisley”. She was the sweetest, easiest and most lazy yearling I have ever trained. Her all time favorite thing was napping…motivating her to work turned out to be quite the challenge😜

I look back on this year fondly, I was just 16yrs old and seemed to have no responsibilities. I spent every single day with Paisley, perfecting each maneuver and designing a show stopping freestyle. I immersed myself in learning advanced ground work and taught her how to side pass towards, sit like a dog, push a big ball, self load into a trailer, ground drive and so many other fun things!

When the competition rolled around Paisley made my first time in the Mustang Training competition arena one to remember as she exceeded expectations at every corner, securing a 🥇place finish🤩

But that was just the beginning of Paisley’s adventures! At the conclusion of the competition, Paisley, was adopted by Samantha Nicks and moved all the way to Montana! Paisley, now known as, Smoke is all grown up and doing fantastic as a riding horse working cattle and living the life as an all around ranch horse!

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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 #2: We adopted a Wild Mustang online!!!

On a cold wet northwest day in March during the 2020 pandemic we were mindlessly scrolling on Facebook when we stumbled upon the BLM Wild Horse Corral…An online auction for adopting Mustangs. We had no idea you could adopt a Mustang online!?! It was like amazon for Mustang lovers!

With our curiosity peaked we started scanning the pages of Mustangs available and within a few seconds there was no deterring us from participating in that auction. There were SO many beautiful Mustangs😍 We quickly built Mustang pens, got approved by the BLM and sat down with every electronic device in the house ready to bid.

The final hours of the auction was a whirlwind of being outbid, computer crashes and yelling at our internet to “HURRRY UP”! As the final minutes of the auction ticked down we had been out-bid on all of our favorite horses, so we placed a bid on a muddy 14hh bay mare with only a $70 dollar bid. Then the website crashed for good😱 It was completely stuck! Had we won the mare? Or had we been out-bid??? After what felt like ages (In reality only a 1/2 hour) we finally received an email saying we had won the bay mare!!! We were thrilled!!! We were getting a NEW Mustang and for only $70 dollars🌟

Unfortunately with covid we were delayed from driving to Burns to pick her up.. but we were finally able to make the 10hr trip serval months later in the summer. But we were shocked to see that our little bay actually shedded out to be a STUNNING roan🤩 WHAT!!! How could this be the same horse!

Now 5yrs later the roan, we named Tahani, is one of our top horses on the farm. She is technically our “Mom’s” horse but we often steal her to help work young babies, fill in at the occasional pony club lesson and to gallop down the trails. She is very sensitive, light and has the smoothest trot I have ever ridden! Not to mention, she is one of the prettiest mares I have ever seen🤩 My biggest takeaway from this mare is to never overlook the plain bays…even if they don’t turn out to be the next “beauty queen” of the Mustang world (like Tahnai) they may end up being the most special horse in your life💜#blmmustang#wildmustang

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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