By Jane Caffrey
Mustangs are the living, breathing symbols of American heritage, and two of them are now on Padre Island.
Teenagers Travis Moore and Grace Walsh have one hundred days to train the wild horses for the Extreme Mustang Makeover competition held in Forth Worth this September. They are working to gentle, saddle train, and build relationships with mustangs.
However, the competition is part of a larger effort to help mustangs, whose natural habitats are rapidly dwindling.
The mustangs, Reya and Anthem, spent a pleasant evening swimming with their new teen trainers on Wednesday. Just two weeks earlier, the wild horses had barely had any contact with humans.
"At first it was really hard to touch her," Walsh said. "It kind of took her a while, because she's really sensitive."
Now Reya and Anthem are socializing and building bonds.
"You've just got to spend a lot of time with them and make them feel comfortable. You'll understand them, they'll understand you," Moore said.
Moore and Walsh are following in the steps of their older sisters, who competed last year. The teens are keeping their mustangs, but other horses will be adopted at the end of the competition.
That end goal of adoption is important because every four years the population of mustangs doubles. Today more than 55,000 wild horses roam ranges owned by the government, but the land is only meant to hold 27,000 mustangs. They also compete with livestock for water and vegetation, which becomes scarce.
"You have horses that are starving out there, and their lands and their resources keep on shrinking," said Claire Walsh, who competed in the Extreme Mustang Makeover last year.
The Bureau of Land Management rounds up between 8-12,000 of the wild horses each year to keep the population and habitat in check. However, only about a quarter of those get adopted. The rest face the possibility of years in holding crowded facilities.
"They just keep them there until someone adopts them, or they die," Moore said.
With the Extreme Mustang Makeover, the teens hope to send one message: anyone who wants to get a horse should consider a mustang.
"The public doesn't realize how great these horses actually are," Claire Walsh said.
Teren Moore, who competed in the competition in 2015, added her that the mustang she adopted stands out from other domestic horses on her ranch.
"I didn't do super great in the competition, but I still brought home the best horse I've ever had," she said.
Follow the teens as they prepare their mustangs for the Extreme Mustang Makeover on their website and Instagram page.
www.kristv.com/story/32085743/wild-horse...ning-for-competition
