CRESWELL – From wild mustang to tame horse, Tumbleweed has completely transformed in less than four months, and it’s all thanks to 17-year-old Kaylee Gardner.
Back in April, Gardner loaded up the “hot” ‘stang for the first time and started her journey doing the Teens and Oregon Mustangs Challenge. Participants in the challenge have to train a wild mustang over 125 days. At the end of the allotted period, trainers have to show the progress they’ve made with their horse.
With less than two weeks until the showcasing competition, Gardner said Tumbleweed is very friendly now.
“At first, I worked on just trying to get close to him, because he was a little hot horse,” Gardner said. A hot horse refers to a horse that might display excessive energy and sometimes unpredictable behavior. Tumbleweed would lunge a lot during the beginning of their work together.
“Once I was able to walk up to him and touch him a little bit, and once we were pretty good together, then we found obstacles to work on,” she said.
“When we first brought him home, she couldn’t be in the round pen with him,” said Gardner’s mom, Delisa. “He was just super agitated, and she couldn’t get close to him at all. It took a good couple of days for her just to get him to come to the fence to eat grass out of her hand.”
Since Tumbleweed was used to eating grass in the wild, it took a couple of weeks for him to adjust to eating grain, but now he likes it.
“How do you train a horse that’s not treat-driven, where you can’t be like, ‘Here’s a treat for doing good,’ because he wouldn’t eat anything,” Delisa said.
“You just had to shove the treat into his teeth and put a bunch of pressure on until he takes it. And now, he just eats it out of your hand,” Gardner said.
In addition to spending one to two hours a day, every day throughout the summer taming Tumbleweed, Gardner has also been participating in soccer and cross country at Pleasant Hill High School.
“It’s her summer before senior year. She’s stayed super busy. She has worked with him every single day since we got him, like, no downtime,” Delisa said.
“I think he really enjoyed the river; it was his favorite thing, most likely,” Gardner said. On his first excursion to the river, “He did good, good on the trails and going up and down the embankments and in the river.”
Gardner said she wouldn’t change anything about the program.
“It was pretty cool, I’m glad I did it,” she said. “I would probably say not getting a hot horse, but I actually really like him. He’s super good, he’s super friendly.”
Kaylee Gardner and Tumbleweed have bonded closely over the past few months. / PHOTOS SUBMITTED BY DELISA GARDNER
The horses for the competition come from the Bureau of Land Management. Trainers have the option to keep them or auction them off. Gardner already has one horse and is looking to attend college at Oregon State University, so keeping Tumbleweed isn’t on the agenda, although she would really like to.
According to Gardner, if he’s not worked every day, Tumbleweed will go back to being a wild horse.
“He’s a really good horse. I just hope he finds a good home. I hope he becomes a trial riding horse,” Gardner said.
