Saving the mustang, one horse at a time

HE ARRIVED with the restless hand of the wind still in his mane, tangled in witch's braids and wind knots.

Fresh from the open range, this horse hadn't been around people. Had never seen a building, let alone a saddle. As he stood in a corral on a recent winter morning, his deep bay coat glowing in the sun, he lifted his head as soon as he saw Tracey Westbury cross the yard.

She walked to him, and he nuzzled her barn coat, looking for treats. At first, even these were strange: raised only on grass, she had to push the apple-flavored biscuit into his mouth so he could discover it was food. As she would soon learn, he was a quick study.

Good thing: Westbury, a Bellingham horse lover, had just 90 days to take this untamed animal, randomly selected for her by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and teach him everything a backyard horse needs to know.

Westbury is one of 28 trainers from Oregon and Washington who entered the Extreme Mustang Makeover, sponsored by the Mustang Heritage Foundation in cooperation with the BLM. Held year-round all over the country, the competitions offer trainers prize money, and the public a chance to see the beauty and aptitude of mustangs. Adoptions are held after the show.

Mustangs roam freely on public lands where they are protected by federal law. As the animals multiply on Western rangelands, including the sagebrush country of Eastern Oregon, the BLM periodically removes them from the open range to prevent them from overgrazing the landscape. The bureau has placed more than 220,000 horses and burros through adoption since 1971 — but it has tens of thousands more in need of good homes.

A yin and yang of a venture if ever there was, Westbury had to earn this young, complex animal's trust and heart. And the more successful she was, the more likely he'd be chosen for adoption. But in a way, she couldn't help herself.

"Mustangs are my weakness," says Westbury, aka Desperate Horsewife, her online handle for a lively blog, "The Mustang Diaries," she has been writing about the pupil she named Steve Holt! An odd name, taken from the hero of the television show "Arrested Development," it's required frequent explanation. But when you choose mustangs over domestic horses to devote yourself to and put your kids on, you get used to explaining yourself.

For unlike their domesticated, highly bred counterparts, mustangs don't have pedigrees, don't earn their owners big purses in competitions. What they do tend to win is hearts. This is Westbury's third mustang, and she swears she'll have no other type of horse.

Strong, athletic, easy keepers with lean appetites and rugged feet that often don't even need shoes, they are the mutts of the horse world — with all the native intelligence born of the need to survive. No spoiled brats in this lot.

Mustangs aren't really wild, they are feral domestic horses that have formed free-roaming herds after they escaped or were turned out generations ago by ranchers, cowboys and native people who began using them after the Spanish introduced horses to this country.

The first domestic horses are believed to have come with Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. More horses arrived during the age of Spanish exploration. By the 1800s, it is estimated, 2 to 5 million feral horses were roaming the country, mostly in the Southwest.

Mustangs have gotten a bad rap virtually ever since — as unteachable, hardheaded dynamite on hoofs. And ugly to boot.

It takes only one glance to set the record straight with Steve Holt!, a real looker with his long-stemmed grace, black mane spilling over a muscular neck and flourish of a tail that nearly touches the ground.

But then mustangs often turn heads, with their coats in every color and pattern, and mix of blood lines that make for body shapes and gaits unique from one animal to the next.

Their fearsome reputation as walking fault lines sting loyal fans like Westbury, drawn to the fresh start a mustang's feral background presents. With no bad habits — or bad memories — from former owners, Steve Holt! for Westbury presented the perfect pupil.

Training was a matter of winning his heart and mind so he could reveal his talents. But first, he had to figure out she wasn't going to eat him.

"When he first came he would just fly over the snow," Westbury says. Unable to stand still because of his anxiety, he circled round and round the corral, eyeing her, unsure of what she wanted, or even what she was.

Westbury kept a saddle on the fence, letting him see it but not even picking it up, let alone trying to ride him. "This is the training the first couple of weeks, just this," she says, standing next to him in the ring.

"When he is nervous, he moves his feet. We moved in circles until he could digest what I was asking of him, then he would understand that it's much easier than moving in circles to just stand here and relax.

"Then I would run a hand down his leg, and then I'd stop, and let him think about it."

She paid close attention and learned his body language. Mustangs "are very much individuals," she says. "He is a thinker. He wanted to know I was going to do the right thing. It's very helpful to take the time to listen to them, to be able to lead them and take them at their pace."

As the horse crashed around the paddock, she would turn her back to him to take some of the pressure off. "You don't want to bully him into anything; you just keep asking and asking."

Westbury was riding her grandparents' cattle bareback at age 3 and got her first pony in third grade. Her father, a Bellingham police officer, brought his K-9 dog home, and it wasn't unusual to find "gone trail riding" on a note from her mom, a devoted horsewoman.

So Westbury knew that animals and humans belong together, even need each other. But it's the person's job to lead. "A lot of people make the mistake of listening too long and letting them train you," she says. "What I've learned is, whatever you do, do it with confidence."

BY MID-JANUARY, the bond between horse and human is obvious. "This is his sweet spot," Westbury says, scratching the horse behind one ear. "We just discovered it. He was very head shy when he came. He didn't want anyone touching him here."

Hard to believe, watching as he reciprocates, dropping his head to lip the front of her coat. By now, theirs is a private language of looks and small touches. Even their carriage has come to mirror one another's — the same graceful movements, heads held high; a poised regard.

The first time Steve Holt! sighed, a sign of relaxation in a horse, Westbury was in the saddle.

One afternoon, she loads Steve Holt! in a trailer — something he does easily these days — and takes him to a local riding ring for a workout. Once inside, the horse heads straight for the soft dirt in a side paddock. After giving it a good look, the horse drops to one shoulder, rolls on his back and grinds with ecstasy in the dust, wagging all four feet in the air.

Then he stands with a snort and shakes the dust from his coat in long, rippling waves. Kicks up his hind legs in a high-spirited buck. Whinnies. Westbury watches, delighting in his pure animal pleasure.

"Love is a verb," she says. "We think of it as an emotion. But the more time you put into something, the harder you work at it, the more you care."

As the auction date neared, Westbury sold a horse to make room in her paddock. And prayed.

First, she had prayed for a good match, a horse to help her succeed in her crash training program. Now, she was praying for money to buy him. Of course, the better he did in the competition, the more money she'd need.

An anonymous donor, reading her blog about sleepless nights, sent in $2,500.

Now what?

She told herself if it didn't work out, it would mean God planned for her to help more mustangs. But how to explain that to her teenage daughter, who had taken to braiding Steve Holt!'s tail?

THE BULL ENTERS the ring with a roar, a snort — and a big puff of smoke. The invention of Curt Storbakken, 74, a veteran Bellingham-area horse trainer, the $15,000 contraption is part riding lawn mower, part model bull, and made for training cutting horses — the kind used to sort cattle.

"Used to be this country was full of cattle on both sides of the road," Storbakken says with a wave of his hand at the country two-lane buzzing with traffic along his property. "Not anymore."

So he invented what he calls the HydraBull, to teach horses brought by owners hoping to win cutting-horse competitions with fancy-bred horses that can earn their owners six-figure purses. Storbakken pilots the HydraBull, trying to pull all the moves a cow would, leading on the horse.

Then there's Steve Holt!

"They don't eat mustangs," Westbury whispers soothingly in his ear, as Storbakken revs up the HydraBulls. Like so many other things, the noisy machine with its unpredictable movement was new to Steve Holt!

The horse looks appalled as the HydraBull roars across the ring. But he manages to walk, not bolt, to get away from it, as Westbury reassures him. Then it's time for their lesson.

Westbury swings easily into the saddle and takes him into the ring. Black Stetson pushed back on his head, cowboy boots sunk into the soft dirt of the ring, Storbakken stands at the center, offering commands as she rides.

"Give and take, give and take. Don't jerk! Keep asking, be very kind with your hands," he says. "Don't pull on him, be very alive with your hands, get him to relax. You're asking too much, don't hurry him."

He gives an admiring nod as Westbury circles, and slows her when she tries to tackle a new maneuver too fast. "Do it at a trot."

While he sounds stern, under his breath he is all praise. "The best thing about that horse is his mind," Storbakken says as he watches the two move with liquid grace. "She is just wonderful with these horses, very patient. And they are very teachable, once they figure out you are not going to hurt them, they come right on.

"She is trying to save them, and that's impossible, of course, but she is trying to, one horse at a time."

Storbakken's wife, Linda, arrives, and mistakes Steve Holt! for one of Westbury's already gentled horses.

Westbury brings Steve Holt! over for a closer look — and gets a thorough teasing. "All your talent and you have never had a good horse," she says, convinced Westbury is wasting herself on mutts.

Westbury, fresh from her ride, is still flushed with happiness at how well Steve Holt! has done. "I may have found the perfect horse," Westbury says. The competition — and auction — are just a few weeks away.

ALL BRIGHT lights and racket, the crowd in this show ring is bigger than anything Steve Holt! has ever seen. After three months of work, it's showtime.

The crowd applauds, and he rears up in alarm, so high he shows his belly. His ranking plummets. While he makes a respectable showing the next day of the competition, he can't compete with the finalists.

"I wish she was out there," Mike Westbury, Tracey's husband, says softly as Tracey videotapes the finalists, racing their mustangs like hot rods, cracking bull whips and even standing on their backs to show how tame the horses have become.

Mike vigorously squeezes a rubber toy cow with one hand. "This is my anxiety cow," he says, as the adoption auction gets under way. It's his job to win.

Steve Holt! seems more than willing to help, entering the ring shying and fussing, and pushing himself in a corner. Westbury, like the other trainers, takes the microphone to talk up her pupil for the crowd. But what she says is, "I want to take him home."

Bidding begins, and Mike is raising his program with a hair trigger, two and three times, finally settling the bid at $550. His relief is obvious as Westbury rides from the ring.

"He's mine," she says outside, leaning from the saddle to hug Steve Holt!, standing quite nicely now, his big brown eyes calm and soft. "And he's going home."

Lynda V. Mapes is a Seattle Times staff reporter. Alan Berner is a Times staff photographer.