Jazz’s Journey
Hi Everyone,
Some of you may have seen the recent article in the CDT about the Midwest Mustang Challenge and my participation in this event with our mustang Jazz. I thought it might be nice to followup with some details of his progress. For those of you who are not familiar with the article let me just brief you on this upcoming event. The Challenge is designed to showcase the trainability of the wild mustang and consequently facilitate their adoption. It is sponsored by the Mustang Heritage Foundation in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management. In a nutshell approximately 50 trainers were selected from across the US to participate in the training and showcasing of these wild animals. After taking posession of their mustangs, trainers have 100 days to train and prepare their horses for a competition to be held in Madison WI April 18-20. The competition consists of a conditioning portion (20%), an in-hand or halter obstacle course (30%) and a riding obstacle course (50%). The top ten from this competition will then be asked to perform in a freestyle competition from which the winners will be picked. Boy, I’m a bit nervous just thinking about all of this! The training part I can handle, it’s the competition that makes me nervous….
So far Jazz has been doing extremely well in his training progress. We have been doing many things with Jazz to desensitize him to many kinds of objects and situations. And, he has come a long way in just 2 weeks. When he first arrived I was unable to approach or touch him. Now I can jump on him bareback and rub him all over with my hands and other objects. We have also had a saddle on him and recently took him for his first trail ride (riderless) by letting him tag along with other horses we were riding. This will get him used to things in his environment without having to worry about a rider on his back. We’re doing all sorts of ground work exercises with him as well and slowly but very surely he is building his confidence about all he is being asked to do. I’m very proud of him! Soon we’ll be going for our first ride….stay tuned.