When the Legendary Mustang Sanctuary gets a new batch of horses, training starts immediately. Although training a mustang is fairly straightforward if you know how to do it, it requires time, and either going too fast or too slow can ruin the horse. The first steps of training will set the foundation of the horse’s behavior for the rest of its life. I will be breaking down the first few steps of breaking a mustang, providing visual reference of some of the mustangs I have trained along the way.

First, we pick them up from here:

Then, we bring them back to the facility and put them in their own enclosure. Usually, they will have one or two days where we only sit in the pen with them for about an hour at a time. Mustangs are naturally curious–most of them come up for a sniff eventually!

After that, the first step is to establish a working relationship with them. This means that I put them, one at a time, in a round pen and teach them they cannot escape from me, but that’s okay, because I don’t intend to hurt them. To do this, I teach them to *lunge*. They learn to walk, trot, and lope in a circle around me at my command: a point for walk, a cluck for trot, and a kiss for lope.

If a mustang ever refuses to listen or does something dangerous, such as charge me, then I will harmlessly wave a whip behind them to get them to lope in a few circles. The quickest way to teach a horse anything is to make good behavior easy and bad behavior hard. When they react properly, I will settle back and let them have a break. When they react poorly, I will have them lope a few circles. They soon learn they’d much rather listen and rest.

This usually only takes a session or two for them to learn. It doesn’t have to be perfect yet.

After that, I begin teaching them to accept touch. This is a simple but tedious process of walking a few steps up to them, waiting, then backing away. I must go the pace of the horse–going too quickly will overstimulate them and they will become too afraid to work. Eventually, they will be calm enough with my presence that they will let me touch them. This can happen anywhere from the first day to the end of the first week.

Teaching a mustang to accept touch is a rewarding process! I get to see them go from a wild animal that tenses with every touch to a gentle horse who leans in for more.

Arguably the most difficult place to touch a mustang is their throat. With a high flight-or-flight response after so long in the wild, they are obviously protective of that area. However, each mustang comes with a tag around their throat that must be removed. Removing this tag is the first big milestone in training a mustang!

After this comes more advanced training. Mustangs are taught to accept the halter and lead rope, which are both necessary for all future training. Getting a horse used to a halter is a slow and steady process that involves letting them sniff it, rubbing them with it, and getting them used to something being around their nose.

For some horses, the most difficult part of halter training is getting the first loop around their nose. The halter tickles their whiskers and sometimes makes them fearful.

In addition to this, some horses learn that reacting fearfully makes it harder for trainers to get the halter on. Therefore, they will run any time the halter touches them. To prevent this, it is important to take things slowly so they do not have a fearful response to begin with, and to lope them in a few circles if they decide to run. Remember, it’s about making the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard!

Getting a horse halter trained is one of the biggest steps in training a mustang. The majority of the time, horses become trusting and easier to handle after being halter trained. However, it still requires a lot of patience–losing a mustang’s trust means you have to start over. The next step is getting them used to following the lead rope, backing up on command, and never pulling the rope out of your hands.

Once a mustang has started its halter training, I and other volunteers would then work with them as often as possible. One of us will spend 20-60 minutes working with the mustang in halter training over the next couple weeks. Over that time, the horse will learn all the other requirements set by the BLM: they’ll learn to walk quietly, they’ll learn to let their hooves be picked up for trimming, and they’ll learn to tolerate a vet check.

Most horses leave to their adoptive homes before they are saddle trained. However, we keep some for saddle training, and other times, the owners pay the Sanctuary to saddle train their mustang before bringing it home. This usually adds another one to three months on their training.

After a bit of sweat and a lot of patience, a mustang makes a wonderful pet! I’m so blessed to have the opportunity to train these beautiful animals!