Friday, Feb. 7, 2025

Mustang Dances His Way To His Second USDF Year-End Award

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For a quarter century, amateur dressage rider Mary Duke has been a fan of Mustangs. In that time, she has personally adopted and trained 16 of them, including Different Drummer, who in 2024 earned his second consecutive U.S. Dressage Federation All Breeds Award championship from the American Mustang and Burro Association. Although many dressage riders have started their horse “from the beginning,” for Duke, the journey with “Slide,” as with her other Mustangs, has always looked a little bit different than those working with more traditional breeds.

“All of mine have been completely untouched,” said Duke, 60, of Delta, Colorado. “You are basically working with an animal who doesn’t know what domestication is. They don’t know haltering and picking up feet and all those other things.”

Duke adopted Slide early in 2017 as a nearly unhandled coming 3-year-old. He had been gathered at the end of the previous year from the Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area in northwest Colorado by the Bureau of Land Management, the governmental agency responsible for monitoring herd population and health. The petite bay colt was vaccinated, freeze-branded, gelded and taken to an adoption event, where something about the young horse caught Duke’s eye. However, she wasn’t technically in the market for a new mount at the time.

“Slide” as a foal (center) with his family band in Colorado’s Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area. Jorn Vangoidtsenhoven Photo

“Although I didn’t need another horse, some of our existing Mustangs were getting older,” Duke said. “I started thinking I should get something to bring along. 

“I do it slow,” she added. “I don’t believe in the 100-day stuff.”

But Duke, who had only seen pictures of Slide online, couldn’t attend the adoption herself, and so he ended up going home with a friend of hers. The following week, she and her partner Dusty Healey made the six-hour drive across the Continental Divide to meet the young gelding in person. 

“I really liked him,” she recalled. “He was kind of small, but that didn’t worry me because Mustangs are sort of late bloomers, and many grow later. But when you adopt a Mustang, you have no idea what you are going to end up with—a lot of it is luck, and a lot of it is experience being around other horses.”

However, Duke was able to learn a little bit more about Slide through the Sand Wash Advocate Team, a non-profit group that collaborates with the BLM to monitor the animals living in the Sand Wash Basin HMA. These volunteers, who document the shifting dynamics of Mustang family bands, shared that Slide was foaled in March 2014, and identified his sire, dam and several full and half siblings.

Over the years, Duke—who grew up foxhunting and eventing in Massachusetts—has developed her own system for training Mustangs, which she described as a self-taught fusion of traditional sport horse training techniques and natural horsemanship methodology. 

First touch: An early training milestone for Mary Duke and Slide. Photo Courtesy Of Mary Duke

“My philosophy is that you don’t get a lot of do-overs in the wild, because if you make a mistake, you’re somebody’s lunch,” she said. “Mustangs can be super curious, and I will encourage curiosity, because I believe curiosity leads to courage. I go slow. I break it down. I use positive reinforcement where I can. And once they learn, for example, that the muck bucket in the corner isn’t worth spooking at, they’re over it.”

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Duke never starts Mustangs under saddle until they are at least 4 or 5 years old. Regardless of what she hopes they might end up doing as a career, she always prioritizes establishing a solid relationship and building two-way trust before anything else. To achieve this, she uses a series of progressive exercises and activities, broken down into tiny, incremental steps.

“For me, the general principle is ‘slow is smooth, smooth is fast,’ and I want the horse to experience the least stress possible,” she said. “I want communication and connection. I firmly believe that, to keep horses out of a bad situation, they have to have good ground manners—you have to be able to halter, see the farrier, give vaccinations. They don’t necessarily have to be ridden, but they have to be a good citizen.

“I don’t rush any of that,” she continued. “I make sure they are really comfortable with the basics. With a Mustang, if you can make a first experience with something very good, very low energy, and really easy, they are like, ‘OK.’ Then you do it a second or third time, and then you can move on to the next thing.”

She found Slide to be a “middle ground” type of Mustang; personable, and neither overly sensitive or dull. He took longer than some of her other Mustangs to accept treats as a reward, but after about six weeks, he came around on that, too. Based on his conformation, Duke initially thought Slide might prove suitable as a new team roping horse for Healey. However, Healey is over 6 feet tall, and Slide stopped growing at 14.1 7/8 hands (his official U.S. Equestrian Federation measurement). 

Slide’s first introduction to a saddle, early in his training. Photo Courtesy of Mary Duke

But ultimately, Slide’s shift toward a career in dressage really began when Duke fell in love with his canter.

“I saw it, and then I started riding it, and it was just awesome,” she said with a laugh.

By February 2021, Slide was just getting the hang of work under saddle and starting to hack around the hay fields on Duke’s farm when they had an opportunity to clinic with her longtime friend, trainer Sue Martin. Duke was eager to learn what Martin thought about her Mustang’s potential for dressage.

“Slide had been nowhere, and it was freezing cold,” Duke recalled. “We were still just doing the basics—he had a bit in his mouth, but we were still super green. And Sue was like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s totally got it.’”

Duke, who is a member of the Grand Valley Dressage Society, began to clinic with Martin whenever she was in the area. Soon, Duke was also taking weekly lessons with Laura Gillmer, a USDF bronze and silver medalist based in Montrose, Colorado. 

“When you have that consistency, it really elevated our training and progressed it,” Duke said. “The thing about riding Slide is he has good movements and stuff, but it’s comfortable. You can sit it, you can ride it, and I trust him, because we have such communication and connection. It gives me a chance to work on myself.

“Having Laura and Sue, and being able to have a horse where I can ride his movements and he’s willing to try—even if he’s never done something before—you can push your dressage schooling,” she continued. “I love dressage, because just as you might be learning something and you polish it and you get good at it, now there is another movement to learn, and another level.”

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Slide and Duke made their center line debut later in 2021, mostly competing at shows close to home. But the following year, Duke focused on getting Slide used to life on the road, traveling to overnight shows around Colorado and Utah. Ultimately, they qualified for and competed in the adult amateur training level division at the 2022 Great American Insurance Group/USDF Region 5 Championships, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, eight hours away.

“When the bell rang and he went into the ring, that was the easy part,” Duke said. “All the other stuff—you can’t train that at home: the show environment, the other horses, the traveling. You just have to go do it. It was about giving him as much confidence and knowledge about all this other stuff as possible.”

Mary Duke decided to make Slide her dressage horse after falling in love with his canter. The pair now have won two year-end USDF All Breeds Awards for the American Mustang and Burro Association. Una Schade Photo

For Duke, 2023 was a year of growing maturity for Slide. They competed at both training and first levels, qualifying again for the adult amateur training level GAIG/USDF Region 5 Championships, held that year in Scottsdale, Arizona. Though they did not place there, they did go on to top the 2023 USDF All Breeds Awards standings for the American Mustang and Burro Association at training level.

Although she believes Slide enjoys his work, he has also tested the boundaries at times.

“When he was younger, in the canter, we’d have a great circle to the right, and then going to the left, all of a sudden he’d blow out the shoulder and run for A,” Duke said with a laugh. “So I’d stop him from running out, and the judges would be like, ‘unfortunate.’ A lot of that was being young, not comfortable, and seeing what he could get away with.

“But I train for tomorrow, and I train for the next ride,” she continued. “I knew it was about going out, getting the exposure, and doing it. They have to go through this stuff to learn it, and the next year, all of a sudden we can canter left, no problem. If you don’t make a big deal about it, as the horse matures, a lot of these problems go away on their own.”

In 2024, Duke set her sights on strengthening their performance at first level, and testing the waters at second. Their persistence paid off; with a year-end average of 66.04%, they earned the USDF All Breeds award at first level. And while she knows that some elements of each level to come may be harder for Slide to demonstrate than a more purpose-bred sport horse, Duke’s mindset is that developing her own toolbox, while improving her horse’s body, is more important than earning a high final score or ribbon.

“When you have the horse you are having fun on, and you’re a good match together and you’re doing it together, it’s such a feeling of achievement and satisfaction,” she said. “My game is my game. And when I know we are doing quality work, we’ve gotten sevens and eights on a movement. It is so awesome, because you worked for it.

“It makes you want to come back for more, and work harder,” she continued. “And he’s made me make that expectation of myself. The thing that is so incredible with these Mustangs is the sensitivity to your energy, and their understanding of body language. These horses know what dressage is. They can feel it.”

Duke thinks that Slide is an ambassador for Mustangs, ponies, and the sport of dressage in general.

“As long as the powers that be keep dressage open and welcoming, I can ride my Mustang pony to however far the journey takes us,” she said. “We can be proud, and have fun, and enjoy the sport.”

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