21-year-old horseman trains wild mustang with gentle hand

Published 10:58 pm Saturday, March 7, 2009

Homes and fashions, hairstyles and lifestyles, the notion of the makeover is everywhere, even in a horse barn.

At a riding arena north of Arlington, 21-year-old Kyle Churchill is putting his skilled horsemanship to the makeover test. The object of his effort is Bella, a 4-year-old mustang.

Until early December, the pretty mare was wild. For nearly a year, she was kept with hundreds of other mustangs at a federal Bureau of Land Management corral in Burns, Ore. Bella’s original home was on federal land in the Murderer’s Creek area, near John Day in eastern Oregon.

Thanks to the Arlington man’s gentle training, Bella may soon find a comfortable home with an owner who prizes her. Since December, Churchill has worked to get the horse ready for an Extreme Mustang Makeover event later this month.

“The whole thing is to promote and show the trainability of these horses,” said Churchill, an Arlington High School graduate who works as a machinist when he’s not training horses. “A mustang is not a wild, snarly beast,” he said Wednesday before putting a blanket and saddle on Bella’s back. “It’s just a horse that hasn’t known a human yet.”

The Extreme Mustang Makeover, a partnership between the Bureau of Land Management and the nonprofit Mustang Heritage Foundation, started in 2007. Horse trainers apply for the chance to spend 100 days preparing a mustang to be ridden by new owners. Competitions are held around the country, and trained horses are auctioned.

Trainers earn 20 percent of the auction price, plus prestige in the equestrian world.

“It’s a very big deal,” said Todd Churchill, Kyle’s father, who also lives in Arlington. “Ever since he was young, there was a magic about Kyle being on a horse.”

At Stargate Ranch south of Mount Vernon, Kyle Churchill rides Bella daily. It’s almost time for the March 19-21 Northwest Extreme Mustang Makeover in Albany, Ore. The event is part of the Northwest Horse Fair &Expo at Oregon’s Linn County fairgrounds. Bella will be judged on body condition, and Churchill will ride her before 10 top mustangs are chosen and awards are given. The auction will be held the last day.

While a wild mustang can be adopted for $125, trained horses have fetched thousands of dollars at Extreme Mustang Makeover auctions, said Tara Martinak, public affairs officer at the BLM district office in Burns, Ore.

Federal law provides for wild horse protection on thousands of acres of government range land in the West. Because of overpopulation in the free-running herds, and limited food, water and space, mustangs are regularly rounded up to curb their numbers.

There are short-term holding pens in several western states, and federal acreage in Oklahoma for horses too old or untrainable to be adopted.

Churchill uses what he calls natural horsemanship. Animals are “gentled” rather than being broken by methods that involve confinement, tie-downs and bucking after saddles are put on. With Bella, he started with a halter and a 10-foot line. Soon, he said, he was able to brush her, “head to tail.”

He brought her home from Oregon on Dec. 6. By Dec. 11, he was riding. “She never bucked,” he said.

Kyle Churchill said his mentor is Ken McNabb, a natural trainer in Cody, Wyo. Kyle’s father said the family has spent years riding on horse pack trips through Washington’s back country.

“When other kids in high school were out running around in cars, Kyle was in an arena with a horse. He’s got a real talent,” Todd Churchill said.

Don’t call him a horse whisperer, though. “If I could whisper to horses, I’d be a millionaire. I can’t,” Kyle Churchill said. “Some people are really good at basketball. I guess I do have a gift.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.