By Jaime Craven
“I honestly thought I forgot half the course while I was in there,” giggled an exhausted Jacqui Baer, peeling off her riding boots as she sat in the grass outside the barn. Just a few hours later, it was announced she had placed in the Top Ten of the 2016 Mustang Makeover.
August 5 marked Baer’s second year competing in the Mustang Makeover, where Massachusetts equestrians gather at the Topsfield Fairgrounds to showcase the culmination of over three months’ training. Baer’s entry, a brown mare named Reckless Redemption, took eighth place in the handling and conditioning competition and ninth in the trail class. This was a step up from last year, when Baer’s previous steed took seventeenth place overall. “Next time I’m prepared and ready to compete in the top 10,” wrote Baer in an email afterwards.
Twenty-four horses competed this year in total. Following the performance, Rae – as Reckless Redemption is called for short – was adopted into “a horse savvy family in PA,” where she will continue her training with one of Baer’s fellow competitors.
Baer first worked with Rae on April 15 of this year, prior to which the horse had never been touched by human hands. Wild horses learn fast, said Baer, as a necessary part of their survival. But that learning is very much a two-way street. “She’s made me learn my patience,” said Baer. “I thought I was a patient person, but I’m really not. If I’m not doing something right, she’s not gonna give it to me. It’s almost like she already knows everything.” She smiled at that. “She’s a little full of it, but…” Baer trailed off, chuckling.
Training a wild mare is no easy task, and Baer has the scars to prove it. On her left arm is a bite mark from her second week with Rae, which Baer believes may be permanent. Baer even competed in the Makeover with a broken finger from early July, when Rae threw her head with Baer’s hand still on her neck. Baer showed little concern for these injuries, giving them only the briefest of mentions amid longer, far more detailed discussions of the horse’s needs. For example, she noted that Rae “spooked” during the trail class, when Baer raised her hand and the light caught off her splint.
Baer credits the documentary Wild Horse, Wild Ride for first sparking her interest – rather, her “life goal” – in the Mustang Makeover. She even remembers the exact date she watched it: August 3, 2013. “I’ve done it twice now, and I’ve just loved how – you know, they’re untouched,” she said. “They’re untouched, they’ve never been handled, so you’re just starting with a blank slate.” Baer graduated from Bedford High School in 2015, heard that the Mustang Makeover was coming to Massachusetts, and jumped right in.
For the 2015 competition, she trained a different wild mare by the name of As You Wish, or Buttercup, after the titular character of The Princess Bride. Unlike Rae, Buttercup was born in a facility, her mother having been captured while pregnant. Baer described her as “honestly pretty easy compared to Rae, much more interested in people.” Though Buttercup was also untouched by the time she met Baer, she had grown up observing humans from afar, throwing hay over the fence for her to eat.
Rae, meanwhile, was older, more dominant, with her habits further ingrained. She was already an estimated two years old when first captured from the wild. It was weeks, going into late May, before Baer was able to load her onto a trailer. Every horse is different, said Baer, depending on their personalities, their past experiences, and their trust levels. Rae happened to be “the ‘I’d rather not move’ type.” Part of this was due to a lack of trust in humans; another part, according to Baer, was just good-old-fashioned laziness.
“You have to listen to the horse,” was Baer’s oft-repeated motto. “As strange as it is… sometimes too much is too much. And that’s what Rae taught me.”
The hardest part, Baer said, was in the beginning, before she could catch Rae. She noticed that the horse was downright terrified of the barn, literally running away from it, and was loathe to enter her own stall. Baer theorized that this was due to the change in light between the outside and the barn. Thus, she began training Rae on an overcast day, turning on the lights indoors and laying food out on the ground. Rae trotted in, nervously, and quickly backed out. Then she trotted in again.
Rae and Baer soon proved to be a good fit, personality-wise, said Baer. While Buttercup had days when she would simply “shut down,” Rae worked steadfastly throughout her training. “I’m a little less brain-fried when I’m around [Rae],” said Baer.
Rae’s specific blend of stubbornness and respect also forced Baer to correct some of her previous bad habits. “If I don’t sit right on her, she’s not gonna give me anything,” she said. “So I really had to focus on my body posture with her. With Buttercup, I just kind of pushed her along. I didn’t really know how to do anything… I BS’ed it.” Baer also spoke fondly of her own trainer, Jacquelyne Ferguson-Toher, whom she credits for finally showing her the correct posture.
Baer picked the name “Reckless Redemption” before meeting Rae. It refers to a song, “Reckless” by Martina McBride, of which Baer heard a ten-second loop on the radio. Baer knew immediately that this would be her freestyle song during the Makeover. The “Redemption” half refers to an image in the song’s music video.
The day of the competition saw Baer sharply dressed in a black blazer and white pants, with dark hair pulled tight behind her head, and rainbow knee socks hidden beneath her boots. (“I love them. I have blue leopard print ones, too.”) The course exhibited the horses’ trainability, namely their willingness to navigate obstacles and calmly – key word – respond to the rider’s direction. After Baer’s display, several friends stepped forward to congratulate her. “You did good. You did real good,” said one woman. “Out of all of them that I saw, she did pretty much the best.”
At seven years old, Rae was the oldest horse to compete in the Makeover this year. Five of those years were spent in holding. A trio of tallies on her neck, the three-strikes brand, marks her as having been offered for online adoption three times, each time unsuccessfully. Had she not competed in a Makeover, Rae would likely have gone into forever holding, able only to be adopted in person. “And who knows where they go from there?” said Baer.
Though it had been her plan from the start, Baer expressed some disappointment at putting Rae up for sale following the performance. Part of the reason is her family’s vacation plans for next year. “They say this takes up too much time,” she said with a slight eye roll. “And I won’t leave the horse, because I’m like, ‘This horse needs to be with me 24/7.’”
More importantly, however, is the issue of the horse herself. Rae is simply too short. At 14 hands tall from ground to shoulder (roughly 4’7”), Rae can’t compete with Baer’s own 5’10”. When riding, Baer’s legs dangle all the way down to Rae’s knees. This interferes with communication, and even necessitated the use of dull spurs. Perhaps this wouldn’t pose a problem if Baer were only interested in trail riding, but this up-and-coming horsewoman is quite certain of her desire to compete.
Thus, Rae was given to a new home, luckily with a family who knew that the horse would not come fully trained. “It was upsetting at the time especially when I wasn’t sure who won her,” Baer wrote a few days after the sale. “But when I found out what family she went to, it was mostly tears of joy. I couldn’t be happier with the home she went to…”
Though she will be taking a break from the Mustang Makeover next year, Baer hopes to purchase a permanent horse for herself in the near future. She continues to work with her trainer and aspires to reach ever-higher levels of competition.
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