For Jessie Yniquez, the hours she gets to spend working with her horses is the best part of her day. As she makes the rounds feeding, brushing and training her horses, she is accompanied by a couple of happy, rambunctious dogs.
Yniquez lives in the Estates with four horses, a pony, a goat and the dogs. The newest addition to their ranch is a horse she named Candy.
Yniguez adopted Candy, a wild mustang, last December from the Mustang Heritage Foundation, an organization that finds caring homes for wild mustangs captured by the Bureau of Land Management.
Candy was captured in Nevada where she roamed across BLM land with her wild family of mustangs. Every year, the BLM rounds up and captures horses from the wild herds and adopts them out. Without the capture and adoption practice, the wild horses would soon outgrow their resources and fall into poor health or even starve to death.
After capturing the wild horses, they select ones that are young enough and healthy enough that they can still be trained, if their new owner desires. They believe Candy was about a year old when she was captured.
The time she has spent training Candy has been thrilling and rewarding, she said.
“I wanted something totally untouched and wild,” she said. “I saw training it as a personal challenge.”
Training such a horse has certain advantages, Yniquez said.  

“If they haven’t had a previous owner, they haven’t learned any bad habits. They’re a blank canvas,” she said.
Yniquez trained Candy with the goal of entering her in the Arizona TIP Mustang Challenge, a contest sponsored by the Mustang Heritage Foundation. The purpose of the contest is to demonstrate the trainability of the horses; that these wild mustangs are good, healthy, smart, adoptable animals.
The Arizona TIP Mustang Challenge has three categories: handling and conditioning, trail leading and freestyle. Yniquez competed with Candy in all three categories and took first place in all of them. They also won Overall Senior Champion and first place for best costume. Playing off Candy’s name they wore a candy-themed costume.
In addition to coming home with five blue ribbons and trophies, Yniguez was also awarded a new saddle, $1,300 prize money and a silver belt buckle.
The first category is Handling and Conditioning, in which the handler leads their horse, ties them up, picks up their feet and loads and unloads them from a trailer.
The second category is Trail. In this, the handler pulls a wagon with their horse, and leads it over a bridge, past a flapping tent and past one of those waving arm guys you see at car dealerships and other obstacles that typically spook a horse.
“The judges are looking for a horse that doesn’t pull away or that’s fearful,” said Yniquez. “They are looking for a calm, relaxed horse that could be led by a 90-year-old grandma.”
The third category is Freestyle, in which the handler and their horse perform a routine that’s set to music.
None of the categories at this level involve riding, but only leading the horse.
Yniquez has always felt a deep connection to horses. Her father bought her first horse when she was 11. She got a second horse when she was 15, and named it Sheila. Sheila was 18 months old and Yniguez trained her to lead and ride. She still has Sheila, who is now nine.
“I’ve always loved horses,” said Yniguez. “They’re fun to be around. They all have personalities and their own characters. I like the bond I create with them. It’s fun to bond with a dog, but bonding with a thousand pound animal is something else entirely.”
Meanwhile, Candy’s training continues. Yniguez is now training Candy to ride. She estimates it will take about 100 days of training to complete.
“She’s coming along great,” said Yniquez.
Yniquez has sold Candy to a lady from Oklahoma who saw them perform at the Arizona TIP Mustang Challenge.
Yniquez said she plans to adopt and train more wild mustangs in the future.