"If she's not solid in six weeks, I'll bring her home and continue to work with her," Tiesing said. She'll buy Rain herself if she feels that's the best thing for the horse. The top 10 competitors will go on to "freestyle finals." At the conclusion, all horses will be available to the public by competitive bid (bidders have to apply and be approved). The Extreme Mustang Makeover includes several basic classes: Handling and conditioning, mustang maneuvers (pattern) and a trail class, too. "I'm hoping everything under saddle goes really quick." "We're in the saddling process now," Tiesing said. Rain actually maneuvers obstacles for her, too. "One day I took a horse for turnout and went by her - I heard her nicker for the first time." "The first time she nickered, she had been here three or four weeks," Tiesing said. She can be lead and is doing groundwork exercises. Now, not only is Rain eating well and putting on weight, she lets Tiesing halter and groom her, and pick out her feet. Tiesing used clicker training, too, using a distinct and consistent signal to mark a desired behavior and following that signal with a motivational reward (praise and food). Soaked alfalfa cubes are pretty good, and Rain learned to gently take them from Tiesing's hand. She started by being near the feed bucket, then holding the bucket (remember the fear of hands?) and then having one hand inside the bucket. (Remember, she'd been running across the landscape of the Western Plains and then in a Bureau of Land Management pen.) Once Rain got used to eating grain from a bucket, she needed to connect Tiesing as being the one providing all that good food. Then she turned off their posts and concentrated on what was best for Rain.įirst, she introduced Rain to actual horse food. Tiesing said she felt a lack of progress seeing pictures posted by competitor trainers on Facebook. "I could be like 10 feet away from her, and move my fingers a little bit and she'd just bolt." "She's skittish about hands," Tiesing added. Getting her hands on Rain was the hard part. Prospective adopters passed on her several times before Rain ended up as a potential mount for this special training event. "She's a 4 year old from Nevada, captured in February 2018," Tiesing said. She picked up the cute little mare in Lebanon, Tennessee, and was given about 100 days to gentle and train her randomly selected mustang. "This is a big event, and we are proud that Missouri is being represented by such an accomplished trainer," said her friend Sharon Pierson said last February when it was announced Tiesing was selected. They will be competing in the Extreme Mustang Makeover in June at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky. After weeks of getting her used to being touched and handled, Tiesing has about six weeks to get her riding under saddle. "I thought I was getting an easy one," she added.īut Rain, that is "Chasing the Rainbow," proved to be a bit shy and cautious with humans. Bays are good, too, though, and she was a cinch to load on the trailer. Making things more confusing, her new horse - clearly a bay - was in a pen with a buckskin. "I was assigned a number, and the paperwork said it was a buckskin," Tiesing said, adding she really likes buckskins. When local horse trainer Nikki Tiesing went to go get her new partner, all she had was an idea, a number and a color.
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