10/27/2026
Lately I have been seeing way to much about Mustang round ups, adoption sales bc of fires and in general a huge increase in people getting mustangs untrained or just out of a Mustang Challenge.
What I am here to try an talk about is how we need to collectively understand these horses are different than domestic bred.
In my opinion/experience, even different than feral range horses. The ones I have met operate uniquely. It’s like close up in their DNA they know they don’t need us. They know how to survive in their herd out in the wild. Sure there are some that take very easily to domestication and love the extra easy food and chiller pace of life but we have to consider the ones who don’t and how we work with them.
The approach of humans as a strong leader, in my opinion falls flat because I would be remiss to think this horse is not smart enough to know she is often a better leader than me.. let’s be real, I could walk up on a mountain lion and not have even smelled of heard it coming 🤷
Sure they still can benefit from feeling safe with us but I don’t believe that means always being their leader.
If we try to use technique that force them into adopting us as “their herd” sure they may attach to us but it’s not coming from an empowered place or even really a choice, as we are often making that “the only option”.
When we take these horses from the wild, we are taking them from their home, their herd and everything they knew. That is trauma .. anyway it is done, it is traumatic. What happens after that can begin to be healing or perpetuate that trauma.
Mustang Maddy just did a post about how many of these horses go into a freeze response. It can look like obedience but what they are doing is learning to internalize and learned helplessness. When you have an expectation of performance in a timeframe - it negates the ability to evaluate each horse’s experience and prioritize them coming out of their initial trauma response, risking laying their training over that trauma rather than letting them decompress and heal.
With our domestic horses even untrained they do not have near the closeness in their make up to surviving without humans. There is much more co evolution in a much more controlled environment. Yes wild horses co-evolved with humans as well but look what colonization has done to that relationship and think about what we are doing collectively now.
The point of this long post is a hope that we will think about how we work with and develop trust, healing and bonds as we not ask but even in the nicest way- demand these wild magnificent creatures learn how to live in the human world.
I’m not hear to say it is all bad or we don’t have boundaries or to argue that codling them can actually also keep them stuck in fight or flight but I think it’s really important we think about what we are doing and what we are asking of these animals.
I feel inspired to share more about things I look for as I am working with these horses.. how I learn/teach them to communicate with me and how I want them to have a sense of agency in their lives.
The picture is of the two I posted a video of the other day, now happily out grazing together. No drama at all. Finn was a good learner 🙂
