Wild Horse Adoptions Oregon

Hillsboro girl trains wild horse for Teens and Oregon Mustangs yearling challenge

GASTON -- The first time Morghaine White met Mystic, the young mustang reared into the air. As White watched the yearling filly, wild and snorting, she wondered, "Oh my gosh. Can I do this? Can I train this horse?"

White is one of 20 Oregon teens participating in the Teens and Oregon Mustangs yearling challenge. The program works with the Bureau of Land Management to gather young wild mustangs from across the state, then give them to teenagers to tame.

This weekend, after 98 days of training, the young mustangs will show what they've learned during a competition at the Yamhill County Fairgrounds . Any horse that is not bought by its trainer will be available for adoption at the show.

Placing the horses is the program's main goal, said founder Erica FitzGerald. Because of overpopulation, many feral mustangs die or end up indefinitely in BLM holding corrals, FitzGerald said. Her organization goes to the corrals and picks out the least-adoptable animals -- basically, she said, the horses that aren't pretty.

Although the program placed all its horses last year -- bidders paid from $25 to $850 for the animals -- persuading people to take the horses isn't easy. Mustangs have a bad reputation, FitzGerald said, because they can be unruly and rough-looking. They don't have the appeal that domesticated purebreds do.

"We beg and beg people," she said. "It's like the humane society for dogs. You have to hope that somebody feels bad enough to take one."

That bad reputation is partially why 16-year-old White joined the challenge. The Century High junior has been riding horses since she was 7. She trained her first horse when she was in fourth grade. The quarter pony was only 5 minutes old -- still "wet and gross," White said -- when she began working with it.

She has trained an elderly, deaf paint horse. And she has ridden several abused and rescued horses. But she had never trained an animal as wild as Mystic.

Hillsboro girl trains wild horse for Teens and Oregon Mustangs ...

GASTON -- The first time Morghaine White met Mystic, the young mustang reared into the air. As White watched the yearling filly, wild and snorting, she wondered, "Oh my gosh. Can I do this? Can I train this horse?"

White is one of 20 Oregon teens participating in the Teens and Oregon Mustangs yearling challenge. The program works with the Bureau of Land Management to gather young wild mustangs from across the state, then give them to teenagers to tame.

This weekend, after 98 days of training, the young mustangs will show what they've learned during a competition at the Yamhill County Fairgrounds . Any horse that is not bought by its trainer will be available for adoption at the show.

Placing the horses is the program's main goal, said founder Erica FitzGerald. Because of overpopulation, many feral mustangs die or end up indefinitely in BLM holding corrals, FitzGerald said. Her organization goes to the corrals and picks out the least-adoptable animals -- basically, she said, the horses that aren't pretty.

Although the program placed all its horses last year -- bidders paid from $25 to $850 for the animals -- persuading people to take the horses isn't easy. Mustangs have a bad reputation, FitzGerald said, because they can be unruly and rough-looking. They don't have the appeal that domesticated purebreds do.

"We beg and beg people," she said. "It's like the humane society for dogs. You have to hope that somebody feels bad enough to take one."

That bad reputation is partially why 16-year-old White joined the challenge. The Century High junior has been riding horses since she was 7. She trained her first horse when she was in fourth grade. The quarter pony was only 5 minutes old -- still "wet and gross," White said -- when she began working with it.

She has trained an elderly, deaf paint horse. And she has ridden several abused and rescued horses. But she had never trained an animal as wild as Mystic.

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