Articles: Horse News
More than just a ride -- Wild Horse, Wild Ride
Imagine breaking an untrained horse, teaching it to respond to basic
commands and then preparing it for competition in less than 4
months. However, this horse is a mustang gathered from the unpopulated,
untamed areas of public lands in the Western United States, and is
completely unused to human contact. In other words the horse is a wild
animal. Alex Dawson and Greg Gricus spotlight eight such horse trainers in
their feature directorial debut, Wild Horse, Wild Ride. The
documentary highlights these competitors as they participated in the Extreme
Mustang Makeover Challenge.
This Challenge is a competition created by the Mustang Heritage Foundation
in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to highlight the
mustangs beauty, versatility and trainability. The trainers have 100 days to
prepare the horses for the competition that culminates in Ft. Worth,
Texas. The Grand Prize winner gets $5,000 and the horses are then available
for adoption at an auction following the competition.
Dawson and Gricus follow eight of 100 trainers as they select horses from
the BLM's adoption center, gentle and finally train them for the
competition. All the featured people in this training odyssey come from
diverse ethnic, economic and geographical backgrounds and horse training
experience. The lineup includes a grizzled Texan and his wife, a mild
mannered hispanic roofer, a daredevil cowgirl from Arizona, a member of the
Navajo nation who once was a rodeo champion on the Native American Rodeo
circuit, his son who hopes to show the world someone from the Reservation
can compete with the best of the best, a Ph.D. student in biomedical
engineering at Texas A&M, and two homeschooled brothers who hail from rural
New Hampshire.
As the directors tell the story of each trainer's experience with the horses,
they artfully present another tale -- how the horses touch the lives of
the trainers and what this competition means to them and their
families. Dawson and Gricus compel the audience to accompany the
trainers on the highs and lows, the successes and failures of the training
process. From the grizzly old Texan who's doctor says he too long in
the tooth to take
part on this endeavor, to the glittery blonde "Evel Knievel" on horseback
who has as much guts as glitz, you hope each of the competitors wins
the final competition. And you join the trainers in the heart-wrenching
experience of realizing they will have to say goodbye to their 'Compadre' if
the bidding goes beyond their financial means. No longer are the
trainers a diverse group of people from all over the country, but a group
of people united in the strong bonds they each created with these majestic
creatures.
We are completely absorbed by the way the filmmakers successfully and
elegantly open up the lives of these trainers and the personal way they
develop a kinship with the horses amid the backdrop of beautifully filmed
landscape -- from New Hampshire to Arizona. This documentary by Dawson and
Gricus is captivating from the selection process, through the horses
training, crescendoing with emotional suspense in the competition and the
resulting adoptions.
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