![]() ![]() I knew there was some really good horsemen here and that I would need to step up and compete.”Īriss says he was pleasantly surprised by the high adoption fee for Hail Yeah. “I’ve been in a lot of competitions and this one was different because it was definitely not about me. “I hated that I didn’t have the opportunity to show the judges what this horse could really do,” Ariss says. Partnering on the fee was the City of Norco, Calif., represented by Mayor Harvey Sullivan and the MHF.Īriss, who trains mostly Andalusians and Friesians for dressage, went off pattern during the horse course and received a zero for that portion of the competition. Hail Yeah was adopted for $50,000, which makes him the highest-priced Mustang in the history of the BLM’s adoption program. ![]() The horse that fetched the highest adoption fee was Hail Yeah ridden by Norco, Calif.-trainer Ray Ariss. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), created the Extreme Mustang Makeover event to highlight the recognized value of Mustangs through the national training competition.Īll Mustangs that participated in the Extreme Mustang Makeover were available for adoption on September 23. The Mustang Heritage Foundation (MHF), in partnership with the U.S. Then for the last 40 days, it was a matter of keeping him ridden and fine tuning a lot of the things we’d worked on.” “I’d work him after I got all my other horses ridden and for the first 60 days or so, it was challenging and a lot of fun. Woods, who has professionally trained cutting horses for almost 30 years and has won numerous National Cutting Horse Association honors, worked with Max at the end of almost every day after riding 15 other horses. “But when Max came through, he went into the chute and tried to come out the other side. “When I first saw Max, I was in line to pick up my horse and all the horses I saw were wild, but they were loading pretty smoothly,” Woods says. The trainers and their horses were judged on conditioning, groundwork and a “horse course,” which represented maneuvers and obstacles found in trail and recreational riding situations. On that date, the trainers competed with their Mustangs at the Will Rogers Equestrian Center in Fort Worth, Texas. The participating trainers picked up their Mustangs from either the Fallon or Pauls Valley facility during the week of June 6-9, 2007. The Mustangs were all similar in age, size and condition. Once the list of Extreme Mustang Challenge participants was narrowed to 100, the Mustang Heritage Foundation, in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management and the Nevada Wild Horse and Burro Commission, brought 100 wild Mustangs from the Nevada hills to the Fallon BLM holding facility in Nevada and the Pauls Valley facility south of Oklahoma City. The Extreme Mustang Challenge began months ago, with an invitation to every horse trainer in America asking them if they would like to participate in a test of horsemanship and an opportunity to win $25,000 in prize money. Riding in this competition made me feel like a kid again.” “When I left Australia and came to America, I was the top-ranked youth rider in Victoria. “I wanted to do this because I thought it would be fun,” he said. Making the decision to take on the Extreme Mustang Makeover challenge wasn’t a hard one for Woods, even though more than one of his cutting horse friends raised a skeptical eyebrow. ![]()
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