If you ask Lauren Woodbridge, training a brumby is a bit like getting a foster child or a rescue dog.
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The Gunning horse trainer is well qualified to comment. She's in the midst of turning a brumby from wild to mild in 150 days as part of the Australian Brumby Challenge.
Ms Woodbridge was introduced to her brumby, Lark, on June 23, and the pair have already struck up the beginnings of a solid bond.
Four-year-old Lark was initially apprehensive after aborting a foal during her trapping in Kosciuszko National Park, but quickly warmed to Ms Woodbridge and the domestic mares surrounding her new yards.
Ms Woodbridge said she initially sat and read a book in Lark's yards as part of a trust-building exercise, before allowing her to initiate touch and eat hay from her hand.
Ms Woodbridge said it was all about turning Lark into an optimist.
"She’ll essentially have a fairly high level of confidence in herself and confidence in me," Ms Woodbridge said.
"I’ll then be able to convert that into all our cues, which, essentially, are the easy part.
"It’s a bit like getting a foster kid or a rescue dog. Teaching them to sit is the easy part. Teaching them to trust you and trust strangers, that’s the hard part."
Ms Woodbridge said brumbies, an often misunderstood horse, weren't all that different to domestic horses.
She said if anything, they were more adaptable and open to learning because of the way they were raised and their tendency to be social and travel in groups in the wild.
"Because of the way they're raised, domestic horses don’t get to learn the lessons their mothers or fathers would teach them," Ms Woodbridge said.
"They’re in clean, perfect paddocks where they don’t get to knock their knees, so to speak, get dirty, have fun and make mistakes.
"Brumbies get to do all of that."
Approved trainers in the Australian Brumby Challenge are randomly assigned to a brumby and tasked with turning them into a calm, well-rounded saddle horse in 150 days.
Ms Woodbridge is one of 20 trainers competing with mature brumbies in the ridden challenge, which will culminate in a four-day finale at the EQUITANA Melbourne event in November.
Trainers will put the brumbies through their paces in several classes designed to show their abilities, with the horses then auctioned to approved bidders if their trainer decides not to buy them for the reserve price.
Ms Woodbridge already has about 30 domestic horses on her property in Gunning, where she runs Black Pearl Horses.
She's lived there for almost six years, after a whirlwind journey in which she has lived in about 25 houses in as many years.
She said her recent stability had inspired her to enter the challenge, and that for her, part of the satisfaction would be seeing Lark succeed with another owner once it was over.
"Part of the whole process is seeing her through to her new home and proving that she can do well with someone other than me as well," Ms Woodbridge said.
"If anyone’s looking for an amazing horse, she’s going to have a hell of a lot of training put into her."
Anyone wanting to follow Lark's progress in the challenge can visit the Black Pearl Horses Facebook group for daily updates, or the Australian Brumby Challenge website for weekly stories.
