Local horse trainers excel at Extreme Mustang Makeover

Hours of hard work and practice paid off for local horse trainers Stacia Stevens and Tenaya Welsh last month as Welsh won her division and Stevens finished in the top 10 at the Extreme Mustang Makeover challenge in Oklahoma City.

Sponsored each year by the Mustang Heritage Foundation, the Extreme Mustang Makeover gives horse trainers across the country a chance to showcase their skills as each trainer gets 100 days to work with a wild mustang with the goal of turning wild to mild.

For Stevens and Welsh, the challenge began with a 1,300-mile round trip to pick up their mustangs from the Bureau of Land Management in Burns, Oregon. Designated horses 5867 and 5852, the pair soon became known as Dragon and Champagne on Ice.

After many hours of hard work, Welsh and Dragon, along with Stevens and Ice, were ready for another long trip — the two-and-a-half-day, 1,600-mile drive to the national competition at the Jim Norick Arena in Oklahoma City.

There, they found dozens of other trainers who had also put in the work to train their mustangs.

“We all have an ego, but everyone seemed to put them aside during the competition. Everyone was legitimately focused on their horses,” Stevens said about the event. “Everyone was rewarded for the progress they had made with their horses. People seemed to be more focused on that than on winning.”

Welsh, 16, and Dragon literally had the judges in tears on their way to winning the youth division’s $1,000 top prize, but Stevens and Ice hit a snag after being chosen for the top 10.

With two patterns remaining, Ice appeared to be injured and unable to continue.

“Something was wrong and I didn’t know what it was. She (Ice) had never really shown any signs of soreness before that day. She was ready to compete, she just physically could not do it,” Stevens said. “I did not want people to see her at her worst, so I figured pulling her from the competition was the best thing I could have done.”

While the injury dashed Stevens’s hopes of winning the $40,000 grand prize, the decision to remove Ice from the competition led her to a different kind of prize.

While youth division competitors are allowed to keep their horses at the end of the competition, the mustangs of the older competitors are auctioned off at the conclusion of the event.

With the injury to Ice, Stevens was allowed to adopt her mustang for another year.

“Getting to keep Ice for another year was the least likely thing that could have happened. It was totally unexpected. I spent the entire time training her preparing myself for the day when she would go to somebody else, I had no expectations of being able to take her back home with me,” Stevens said. “Now I get another year to train her as a reining horse.”

IN ALL, the duo said the trip to Oklahoma was a resounding success and well worth the time and effort, especially getting compliments from the South Steens Herd Management Area, where Dragon and Ice came from.

“They said many horses were brought in for the competition, but no other trainers would take them. They said the horses were untrainable. I guess they were wrong,” Stevens said.

Dragon and Ice are back home at Freedom Ranch west of Kalispell and enjoying some time off from training as Stevens and her young protégé Welsh ride the Montana barrel-racing circuit before deciding what is next for them.

“The whole experience was fun and I was so happy when we won. People at the competition kept asking me to sell Dragon, but that was never going to happen,” the soft-spoken Welsh said. “Now, I am going to finish up the barrel-racing season and probably get ready for another Extreme Mustang Makeover. That is, if I can convince my parents to let me keep another horse, because we all know I won’t sell it,” she added with a laugh.

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.