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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Horse Trainer Tries To Make Mustang a Little Less Wild
By Jackie Jadrnak
Journal Staff Writer
POJOAQUE — Every day is a new adventure for Darwin.
In fewer than 3 years on this Earth, he's been rounded up from Nevada's Wheeler Pass, held in a feedlot in that state for almost a year, trucked off to Oklahoma and trailered to his current home near Pojoaque.
Little does he know that, by learning the ropes — and halters and saddles and bridles — from Joslyn Pretz, he's getting a second shot at life.
Darwin is a mustang, born wild, but born onto a range where mustangs are proliferating beyond the capacity of the land to support them. The Bureau of Land Management has about 30,000 wild horses and burros in government corrals, with another 33,000 estimated still roaming wild in 10 Western states. BLM officials earlier this year said costs of taking care of the animals are out of control, and they are considering euthanizing animals termed "not adoptable" or selling them to any buyer, which could include folks who take them to slaughterhouses.
Pretz is doing her small part to at least save Darwin from that fate. She applied to, and was accepted by, the Extreme Mustang Makeover program. In it, 150 horses are matched to 150 trainers, with another 200 yearlings and trainers added in, to compete for prizes in Fort Worth on Sept. 18-21. The biggest prize for Darwin might be a final matchup with a loving owner in the auction that ends the event, which is sponsored by the Mustang Heritage Foundation. That's the goal: Through training and publicity, finding good homes for the horses.
"He wasn't considered adoptable," Pretz said, noting that people are attracted to flashily-colored paints. The dark bay is tall for a mustang — 15.1 hands — with clean lines, graceful movement, and a kind and intelligent eye. She said she knew she had a winner when she picked him up in Oklahoma and this "wild" horse walked calmly up the ramp into the trailer.
"He's very smart, very curious, still a little shy," she said. "But I think he'll get out of that. I can see him in a couple years being a kid's horse. He's calm enough; he trusts enough."
He was named in honor of Charles Darwin. "He's named Darwin for a reason: survival of the fittest," she said of the gelding.
A native of Kentucky, Pretz said she first sat on a horse when she was 3, was taking lessons by the time she was 6, and eventually was eventing, riding dressage and showing in hunter/jumper classes. She trained horses and gave riding lessons in Maryland, then moved to Pojoaque about 10 months ago when her astrophysicist husband, John Pretz, got a job studying gamma ray astronomy at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Her real concentration now — when she's not teaching high school chemistry during the school year — is starting young horses with their training. Pretz said she thought the Extreme Mustang Makeover "sounded interesting" and one of the judges, trainer John Lyons, is her "all-time idol." So she applied, thinking it unlikely she'd be chosen — but she was, along with four other New Mexicans: Roeliff Annon of La Villita, Boyd Brodie of Churchrock, Matthew Miller of Roswell and Alicia Romero of Bernalillo.
Pretz said her husband "was a little skeptical about a wild mustang on our little acre." Darwin shares the space with a horse Pretz is training for a friend, along with the two that moved with her from Maryland: a Canadian warmblood and a Welsh pony mix. Oh, and Jellybean, the pony's foal, who was born here.
Since bringing him home June 13, Pretz has been working with the mustang, first getting him used to her touch, helping him to accept a halter and being led, and exposing him to different sights, sounds and "scary" objects. He learned about grooming, which he took to so readily, Pretz said, that "our 8-year-old neighbor groomed him and picked out his feet the other day."
Then came the saddle, the bridle and bit sweetened with molasses, and the feel of weight on his back. Within a month, she was riding him. Usually, she said, she takes it a little more slowly, but the Makeover has her on a deadline, and Darwin is smart enough and trusting enough to learn quickly.
A little too quickly, since he figured out that when she pulls out the overturned bucket to give her a boost to the saddle, he can back away a step to evade her. With patience, Pretz moves the bucket, positions herself again, gives some tugs on the stirrup strap to create a little more discomfort than the steady pressure of her foot in the stirrup would give. "You give them choices," she explained. And you try to make the behavior you want, the one that they end up preferring, too.
Only her fourth time in the saddle on him, Darwin clearly was responding to her aids, moving forward with a squeeze, bending into a turn with the pressure of her leg and follow-up guidance through the reins.
Standing quietly while helper Hannah Sherk saddled up a companion for Darwin's first trip down the road, Darwin was surprised by the sudden feel of Pretz's hand on his rump. His reaction was typical for a green, prey animal: He took off across the arena in a series of bucks, with Pretz sitting tight but finally bailing off into the softness of a manure pile.
She blamed herself. He was so calm, she said, that she momentarily forgot he wasn't a seasoned riding horse, that he might be startled by her leaning back and scratching his rump. It's the first time he ever did anything like that, she said, sheepish that a reporter and photographer were there to witness it.
Within minutes, she was on his back again, patting the spot that surprised him, and riding him out for a trip down the dirt road, for yet more new sights and sounds, wind stirring up tree branches and thunder rumbling in the distance. Just a few more steps on a long journey.