Sunka Wa Kan

                {sprit dog}

         Mustang for the Mustang extreme challenge

               "There is always light at the end of the tunnel"  

     I was picked of over two hundred trainers to do a contest call Mustang extreme challenge to be held in Fort Worth TX on Sept. 21. We have three months to train a mustang and after we are done it gets auction off.  To me this contest is a good thing it will get some mustangs a good start.

  I got a dark bay almost bay gelding on the way home I was thinking ok have to come up with a special name for him . So I thought I would come up with a Lakota name for him. I will be honest have had a chance talk to my Lakota brother lately so I was a little off on the name. As they say if you don't use it you lose it the mustang ended with having the name Sun ka wa kan .Which means sprit dog in Lakota to me it is a fitting name for him.

 We are having fun together  here is a picture after the second week. I pulled it off a video I made so the picture isn't the best but it shows how well he is doing.

After I did it this close I set the barrels twenty feet from each other and had him doing a figure eight thru them. I like doing this because it helps the horse get use to me being over top of them. The biggest problem I had was I got him so light to the halter that he was reacting to the weight of the long rope when I set the barrels far apart.

 We are going into our fourth week at this time, he is ready for me to be in the saddle but I am going to give him another week. I have to train him for any to be able to ride him not just me. To be  honest I am planning on bringing him back after we are done with the contest.

Here is after three weeks this is the first time I put him up there and it only took me about one minute he trusts me and I got that trust by controlling him feet and when I say that I dont mean I ran him around a round pen and wore him out. I was fair to him so there is other ways of doing it without running them around a pen .

 When I do climb on him I already have my tools there .He is one of the few I have ground drove him. I got him real soft to the bit. So the riding part will be easy, I want to show with him  that with the right knowledge a mustang can be just as good as any horse. As a young Navajo said one time a mustang is still a horse.  The biggest thing I see is people walk around them on pens and needles to much. I move around them like I would any horse and yes at first they react but in time they stop reacting. They do take some extra work and a person who is thinking about getting one needs to think ok I cant just have a trainer to do it I have to be able to do it.

 With mustangs if only one person handles them all the time they will be weary of other people. But all in all they do make a good horse if you are willing to  put the time in.