KINGMAN, Alta. – Terri McKinney and Brenda Winder think it’s normal to crawl between the back legs of a horse, slide under its belly to the front legs and pick up the horse’s hoof and place it on their stomach while they’re flat on the ground.
“What we do here is normal stuff,” said McKinney of Wild Deuce Retreats and Outfitting.
Even seasoned horse owners watched in awe recently as the pair rode their horses through an obstacle course at the Working Mountain Horse Competition and Sale designed to showcase McKinney and Winder’s mountain horses.
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The horses loped over logs, walked through an A-frame tarp flapping in the wind, walked past a pack camp where a
man cut logs with a noisy chain saw, pulled logs across the pasture, stepped gently into knee high deep water, walked backward
up a hill and picked their way through
thick trees.
Crawling through horses’ legs or wrapping horses with tarps is partly showmanship to display their horses’ temperament and training before the sale the following day, but it’s also a safety requirement in the isolated mountains west of Rocky Mountain House, Alta., where the women offer pack trips, horse training, weddings and women’s retreats.
McKinney was once forced to crawl through the legs of several pack horses to Winder, who was lying on the ground with what she thought was a broken leg.
“It’s about how the horse reacts when something happens,” said Winder, who believes the key to training is stimulating the horse and hundreds of hours of riding.
“It’s miles and exposure,” Winder said.
Trailing a string of pack horses and green riders down a narrow trail along the side of a cliff requires horses that think before reacting.
The women believe training horses in rough mountainous terrain pushes the horses to gain the trust of riders.
In May and June, the partners spend hours each day training clients’ horses. At the
end of 60 days, the owners participate
in a three to five day pack trip where they ride their horses through rivers and over steep mountains trails and sleep beside a campfire.
“The biggest reward is to see someone get on their horse and gain confidence. By the third day they’re running down banks. We’ve changed people’s lives,” McKinney said.
For the rest of the summer McKinney and Winder offer mountain retreats and pack trips while training the horses. For a change of scenery they help McKinney’s husband, Chuck, look after 200 cow-calf pairs on a nearby 63,000 acre grazing reserve.
The pair grew up typical horse crazy girls who lived a quarter of a kilometre apart north of Kingman. They spent years riding in a 4-H pony club and travelling the horse circuit with their horses.
They reunited after spending 10 years apart and marked the occasion with a pack trip. Before the trip was over they had mapped out their new career as Wild Deuce Outfitters.
It hasn’t been easy operating as outfitters in a typically male industry. When they walked into an outfitting meeting early in their career, others assumed McKinney’s husband was the guide.
“Now people are taking us seriously,” McKinney said.
