The Mustang Diaries: New Student Alert! The Mustang Who Has Opinions About Everything

There’s a new face in the training program, and he comes with 15 years of life experience, 12 years with his owner, and a whole lot of opinions about how humans should—and should not—run his life.

Meet Sjoeka, a 15-year-old gaited Mustang gelding who has officially checked into my version of equine boot camp.

Sjoeka was adopted by his owner 12 years ago, so these two have a lot of history together. She has stuck with him through the years, worked around his quirks, and given him plenty of chances to reconsider some of his life choices.

And now, in the most loving way possible, she has finally had enough of his crap.

So… here he is!

A Horse With a Very Detailed List of Terms and Conditions

Sjoeka arrived with quite the reputation for being not-so-nice under saddle, particularly when the agenda doesn't line up with what he had planned for the day.

Trailer loading?

He'd rather not.

Arena work?

Absolutely unnecessary.

Cantering?

Hard pass.

Trotting?

Sometimes negotiable. Sometimes apparently offensive.

Being told what to do in general?

Sjoeka would like to speak to management.

He's spent a lot of years learning what works for him—what behaviors get him out of work, where he can push back, and how much say he can have in what happens next. At 15 years old, we're certainly not starting with a blank slate.

Welcome to Boot Camp

When I jokingly call my program "boot camp," I don't mean we're going to run him into the ground, pick fights with him, or force him into submission. Quite the opposite.

Sjoeka is going back through the whole program. We're revisiting the foundation on the ground, establishing clear expectations, working on softness and responsiveness, addressing the holes, and then carrying all of that into his work under saddle.

The goal isn't to overpower him. It's to make the right answer incredibly clear—and teach him that bucking, protesting, refusing, intimidating his rider, or simply deciding "nah" doesn't make the question disappear.

There will be pressure. There will be release. There will be accountability. There will also be plenty of opportunities for Sjoeka to think through what we're asking and discover that cooperating with his handler and rider is actually a pretty comfortable place to be.

And a little over two weeks into his stay, we're already starting to see that happen.

From Bucking and Fence-Scraping to Cruise Control

Sjoeka is now a little over two weeks into training, and his progress under saddle has already been pretty dramatic. Those first three rides were a bit of a wreck.

There was plenty of bucking, rearing, plenty of protesting, and even some creative attempts to push me off on the arena fence when he decided he wasn't particularly interested in what I was asking. But the important part was that none of those behaviors changed the expectation. We worked through them. The question stayed the same. The release came when he found the correct answer.

And now?

Sjoeka is riding walk, trot, and canter in the arena without an issue. At this stage, we're intentionally not worrying about steering yet. Right now, we're working on something much more fundamental: forward movement and responsibility. I refer to it as setting the horse on "cruise control."

I establish the gait, and Sjoeka's job is to maintain it until I ask for something different. He needs to walk when asked to walk, move into the trot when asked to trot, transition into the canter when asked to canter, and come back down through those gaits without an argument.

I'm not micromanaging every stride. As long as he is in the gait I set him at, then he is allowed to speed up or slow down within that gait to his liking. I'm not constantly nagging him to keep moving. And I'm not asking him to juggle ten different things at once. For now, the rule is wonderfully simple: When I put you in a gait, stay there until I tell you otherwise.

For a horse who arrived with a history of having some very strong feelings about arena work, trotting, cantering, and generally being told what to do, watching him begin to quietly cruise around the arena is a pretty exciting change.

The Groundwork Is Changing, Too

The improvements aren't limited to riding. Sjoeka's groundwork is becoming much more intentional. He's increasingly willing to move out of my personal space when asked instead of treating my bubble like a suggestion.

He's also learning that when I ask his feet to move, I expect them to actually move. One of the biggest changes has been the amount of hustle and intention he's putting into his responses. Rather than dragging his feet through an exercise and doing the absolute bare minimum, he's beginning to move with purpose.

That may sound like a small detail, but it matters. There's a big difference between a horse mechanically going through the motions and a horse who is mentally engaged, responsive, and taking responsibility for his own feet.

Older Horses Can Learn New Rules

At 15, Sjoeka isn't some untouched young Mustang who simply doesn't know what's expected of him. He's had more than a decade to develop patterns, preferences, evasions, and opinions. That doesn't mean he's incapable of changing them.

In fact, the progress we've seen in just over two weeks is a pretty good reminder of exactly that.

It means we have to figure out why those behaviors exist, what has reinforced them, and what pieces of communication may be missing underneath them.

That's one of the reasons I take horses through a comprehensive groundwork program even when they've been ridden for years. Riding problems aren't always just riding problems. Sometimes the issue that looks huge from the saddle becomes much easier to understand when you start examining the horse's responses to pressure, movement, boundaries, body control, and communication from the ground.

And sometimes, before worrying about perfect circles, pretty transitions, collection, or precision steering, we need to go all the way back to something as simple as: Go forward when I ask. Keep going until I ask you to stop. That foundation gives us something to build everything else on.

Two Weeks Down—and a Lot More to Come

Sjoeka certainly isn't "finished." We're barely getting started. There is still plenty of groundwork to refine, steering to introduce, trailer loading to address, and eventually much more finesse to develop under saddle.

But for a horse who came in with a reputation for bucking, protesting arena work, objecting to faster gaits, and generally having some strong opinions about human requests, quietly riding W/T/C around the arena a little over two weeks later is a pretty darn good start.

And perhaps more importantly, we're starting to see a change in his attitude toward the work itself.

He doesn't need to lose his personality. He doesn't need to become a robot. And he certainly doesn't need to stop being a Mustang with opinions. He just needs to learn that having an opinion and getting the final vote are two very different things. So far, Sjoeka seems to be figuring out that boot camp might not be quite as terrible as he initially suspected.

Although I'm sure he'd still like to file a complaint with management.

Unfortunately for him…

I am management. 🐴

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