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Janesville trainer is first Wisconsinite to win national Mustang challenge

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Jessica Davis of Janesville won the Mustang Challenge in Murfreesboro, Tenn. with her 4-year-old mustang Rock'n Red.

JANESVILLE — A young horse from Nevada has helped make a little Wisconsin history.

Janesville horse trainer Jessica Davis brought home a first place last weekend from Murfreesboro, Tenn., in the Extreme Mustang Makeover Challenge.

Davis is the first Wisconsin trainer to win the challenge.

The national event is hosted in cities across the United States to foster appreciation of the American Mustang and match wild horses with talented trainers. The challenge for the trainers is to make a workable horse out of a wild one in 100 days.

The animals and trainers compete in a show, and the horses are then auctioned off to families or individuals looking for family horses, Davis said.

A trained horse, or at least one that has gotten to work with a trainer, is much more adoptable, Davis said.

The easy part was teaching a totally wild animal to trust and obey her, Davis said.

The heartbreaking part was seeing him sold in auction, she said.

Luckily, the Alabama family that bought Davis' Mustang, Rock'n Red, took the time to meet Davis and Red before the auction. While she's sad to see him go, Davis knows that Red is going home to a happy 10-year-old girl and her family.

"They're just in love with him already," Davis said.

The show part of the event included putting the horses through the kinds of things they might do on a regular basis, Davis said.

Red was judged on his ability to listen to commands, work on a rope, get in and out of a trailer, be saddled, move over and around obstacles and have his feet touched.

During one test, Davis took Red's halter off and let him wander across the arena. Red scored full points when he came back at Davis' command.

Pretty amazing, considering the loud, colorful, strange atmosphere of the Miller Coliseum in Murfreesboro, Davis said.

Even more amazing, considering that in July, when Red came in a trailer from a holding pen in Illinois, he wouldn't let Davis touch him.

Davis, who has been training horses for 14 years and five years as a professional, is glad she took on the challenge of training Red.

She's reasonably certain she'll try again.

"It's a hard decision," Davis said. "It's so hard to have to let this horse go. But the benefit was getting this horse to a good home. Otherwise, he'd be sitting in a feedlot."

The American Mustang

The Mustang Makeover Challenge is a competition and educational event that takes place in cities across the United States several times a year.

In April, when the challenge came to Madison, federal Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Karen Roberts spoke to the Gazette about the American Mustang.

The wild horses are descendents of horses brought to North America by Spanish Conquistadors, Roberts said.

Norse explorers also introduced horses into the herd, she said.

During the Great Depression, the herd grew as farmers released horses they couldn't afford to care for.

Adoption programs help control the size of America's wild mustang herd, she said.

The land can sustain a population of only about 30,000 mustangs. Because the horses are federally protected and have few natural predators, the herd can increase at a rate of 20 percent per year, she said.