Wild Horse Inmate Program

"When the program first started, the focus was to gentle the horses and halter-train them," Ackley said. "The thought was, if people could handle them they'd be a lot more successful adopting the horses out".

Canyon City, Colorado, is not the only WHIP facility, but it was the first and continues to be the largest.

"With these training programs around the country and BLM's effort to remove only adoptable horses, these combined factors really decreased the backlog of horses in holding," Ackley said.

Saddle-Training Becomes?Part of the Program Ackley joined BLM in 1992, and soon after, the East Canyon Correctional Complex decided to make a change to their program. "The prison, recognizing the value of this program to the inmates and their rehabilitation, decided they wanted to take on saddle training the horses," Ackley said.

Starting small, with only about 50 horses, the inmates successfully trained the wild horses and they were easily adopted out. Today, the 2500-acre facility employs about 50 inmates at a time and about 100 horses are saddle-broke each year. About 15 inmates are trainers and the rest are employed caring for up to 3,000 wild horses on the premises.

"We have to vaccinate, de-worm and trim all the time," Ackley said. "Even only trimming every three months, we have to trim 1,000 horses a month just to stay on top of everything. It's a big operation."

Inmates enrolled in WHIP are classified as minimum-restricted, which Ackley says means they have to be eligible for a gate pass to leave their cell house to go out to a job.
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Ackley says about 40 horses are in training at a time, and after a horse is gelded and has recovered, it has to meet several criteria before it is chosen for saddle-training.

"We target a horse that is 3 to 4 years old and a gelding," Ackley said. "A horse that's going to mature around 14.3 - 15 hands, minimum."

Once chosen, a horse is put in a single pen and will begin training in a round pen. "Usually after two weeks, they'll have a pretty good idea if the horse will work out," Ackley said.
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"The theory from start to finish is press and release," Ackley said.
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"That's always a big test," Ackley said. "From there, we take the horse into an arena where they learn circles and rail work. We can't expect them to be finished or really smooth, but they will know the different cues for walk, trot, lope, back and sidepass."

The horse will learn to open gates, drag a railroad tie with a rope, load into a horse trailer and other common tasks.
"The finishing touches for a horse is putting it through an obstacle course," Ackley said.
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"We adopt saddle-trained horses to the public as well as border patrol units," Ackley said. "It's really expanded our adoption market. We have more demand than we can satisfy for those saddle-trained horses, so I think that speaks to the quality of the training."
Border Patrol's Greenest All-Terrain Vehicle Ackley says 90 percent of the horses are adopted by border patrol units.
"The nice thing about the border patrol is they take the horses right to work," Ackley said, "and that's what they need.
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While the border patrol have already figured out the worth of these wild horses, Ackley says prison-trained mustangs are also ideal for experienced horse enthusiasts that enjoy spending time on the trail.
"The bread and butter of these mustangs is that they really excel at trail riding," Ackley said.
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Fran Ackley is the Wild Horse and Burro program leader for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Colorado. He oversees the Wild Horse Inmate Program (WHIP) in Canyon City, Colorado. WHIP was founded 25 years ago.

"When the program first started, the focus was to gentle the horses and halter-train them," Ackley said.