5,000 Miles for 5,000 Mustangs
The Mustang Discovery Ride with Lisanne Fear and Hannah Catalino
Wild mustangs are engrained in American history, considered a national treasure, and they embody the freedom and spirit of the American West. But despite their rich history, versatility, obvious hardiness, and widespread availability, far more wild mustangs are rounded up than get adopted, and adoptions have hit an all-time-low. The Bureau of Land Management is even offering financial incentive, paying individuals to adopt the mustangs, but to little avail.
Lisanne Fear and Hannah Catalino hope to change that, by setting out on a 5,000 mile journey from Washington, DC, to California, and inspiring the adoption of 5,000 wild mustangs. Hannah and Lisanne will be riding their own previously-wild mustangs, in order to showcase this very special breed, educate the public about their plight and potential, and encourage wild mustang adoption. 5,000 may seem like a lofty goal, but it’s just a fraction of the 50,000 mustangs who have already been rounded up and now sit in holding pens, indefinitely awaiting adoption. As many as 88,000 mustangs still roam free in the US, far more than land can sustain (Gus Warr, Utah BLM).
Hannah Catalino
Hannah Catalino is a traveling trainer and liberty clinician who has been training mustangs since 2012. Based in Whitehall, Montana, her facility offers students the opportunity to learn to gentle mustangs and learn more about liberty work. “Mustangs are my life,” says Hannah, who also spends a significant amount of time on the road, in the US and abroad, teaching clinics. The Mustang Discovery Ride is a way for her to combine her passions for both mustangs and travel.
Lisanne Fear
Lisanne Fear grew up in Pinedale, Wyoming, and began her mustang journey while training horses to pay for her books during college. Later, she worked with a guest ranch that bought mustangs from a prison program. She enjoyed seeing the mustangs learn and grow into wonderful horses, and take riders to spectacular places in the mountains. After the ranch, Lis took an interest in camping with horses and ran her own pack trips with friends. She doesn’t like walking or carrying her own gear, so horses are an ideal mode to be able to “camp in comfort” in the backcountry. “Horses have expanded my life,” she says, “and I continue to learn more from them every day.”
Q: What’s so unique and exceptional about the mustang?
Lisanne: Mustangs are not considered to be a breed, but just a once wild horse. It’s like picking up a dog from the pound, when picking up a horse from the pens. Without doing genetic testing it’s hard to know what breeds they are composed of. Mustangs are some of the hardiest horses and easy keepers. They don’t need to be pampered like many papered/pure bred equines. Once you can build that trusting bond with them, they will do absolutely anything for you. It’s really incredible, the unique bond that develops between mustangs and humans.
Q: How did the two of you meet?
Lisanne: We first met when I entered my very first mustang makeover back in 2014 in Nampa, Idaho. They have a Facebook group that everyone was part of, where all the trainers could watch what the others were doing. I was watching Hannah’s updates and it was just so cool to watch her and see what she was doing, that when I finally went to the competition, I was like, that’s one of the trainers I really want to meet and make a connection with. We continued a friendship from afar for quite a few years and then back in 2019, Hannah decided to use me as a guinea pig for her student training program, so I went and interned with her for 2 months up at her facility in Montana.
Q: How did you get into training mustangs specifically?
Hannah and her mustangs in Whitehall, Montana
Hannah: I was originally training miniature horses in Texas, where I’m originally from, and because the minis are too small to ride I got really interested in trick training and liberty and other ways to work with your horse and appreciate horses. I saw this YouTube video of these youths doing a mustang makeover with yearlings, and I thought wow, that’s so cool! That’s basically what I do with my mini but with a wild horse. They had only had youth competitions in TN and all the sudden, for the first time ever, they had one in Texas, and I’m like, I have to do this. Thankfully everything worked out – when I was 17, I was able to get not one but two mustangs my first time around. After that I was just in love with the mustangs; it’s so rewarding to me, when you have this horse that’s so terrified of everything, and to see their transformation from so distrusting to so confident, so willing, in various phases. It’s not that it always happens overnight, I’ve had horses that it takes 10 months, or a couple of years to get to that point where they trust you, but once you get it it’s such a great feeling. To go from something that is deemed not fit for society into something that is desirable.
Q: What sparked the idea for this cross-country trip together?
Lisanne and Hannah with their Mulestang
Hannah: Lisanne and I, we were both adventurous, obviously, and we knew if we ever got the opportunity to do something together, we were both up for it. We went back and forth talking about doing some sort of long ride, but we weren’t really sure if we would actually do anything. But we decided it would be really cool to find a mulestang, a BLM branded mule, and that would be the ultimate packing, long-riding partner, and mulestangs are there, but they’re very hard to find in the mustang community. It doesn’t happen a lot naturally that a burro and a mustang breed in the wild, but it does happen, and so anyway, long story short, we end up finding one that’s available – and that’s the other thing, finding one that’s available isn’t so easy, because since mules don’t reproduce, if they [the government] do round them up, they usually release them back into the wild, so finding an available one wasn’t so easy but we did. So I told Lisanne how cool it would be to have her as a packing mule, so we both decided to go in together and adopt her, and then it was like oh, well now we have to do the long ride. It just seemed so rare that we would get the opportunity to do that, so we thought ok, this must be a sign that we’re supposed to do some journey, so here we are. She brought the whole thing together.
Q: When are you planning to start your journey and how long do you anticipate it taking?
Hannah: We plan to start in October, we don’t really have any back date yet. It’s supposed to take roundabout a year.
Q: What route are you taking?
Hannah and Lisanne will be taking the southern route of the American Discovery Trail.
Hannah: Our route is along the American Discovery Trail, which spans from DC to north of San Francisco. We’re still deciding what exact route, what exact states. There’s a northern and southern route, so that’s what the trip we’re on right now is, to plan which looks better.
*since this interview, Hannah and Lisanne have decided to take the southern route, which passes through Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California.
Q: How much horse camping experience did you have before deciding to undertake this adventure?
Hannah’s first camping trip with horses!
Hannah: We did a camping trip for the first time with the horses for our promo video a couple weeks ago, and that was my first time camping with horses, so Lisanne is definitely more experienced in this area.
Lisanne: We camped in a campground last night in a tent, and Hannah said, “I can probably count on my hand the number of times I’ve actually slept in a tent in my life,” and I was like, “well I can probably count on one hand this year, I guess.”
Q: What are some of the determining factors in your route planning? What are some of the logistics you have to take into consideration for a trip like that?
Lisanne: So a lot of this trip is determining how we’ll camp and adapting it. I feel really comfortable with the mountains, and even my dad was like, “Lisanne, the east coast just isn’t the mountains of Wyoming, it’s much different.” And so, that’s a very valid point. I’m curious to see how it works out. We are currently going to be looking for truck and trailer sponsors and having a living quarters ability there, just so that way we make sure we’re camped in a safe place every night, at least until we get out into some of the more open country. Everything that we’ve been reading in books of people who’ve been long-riding and doing different things, a lot of them have met up with people along the way and slept at their places and different things. I think that’s a great network because we’re all connected, and we all know a neighbor within 20 miles or so, which is about as far as we can really go [in a day], and then that neighbor knows another neighbor down the road. It seemed like in a lot of areas they were leap-frogging so I would like to try to be open to the idea and opportunity of leaving up to fate where we’ll land some nights.
Hannah: But with that idea…we’re in Covid-times, so everything we’re reading is about not Covid-times, so the responsible thing to do is, if we can, have our own truck and trailer, things like that. People may not be as open to wanting us to stay at their place, so if we can have our own place, that would be interesting. We’re reading all this stuff, and it’s like, that was a different era and frame of mind, and we’re trying to plan a long-ride with totally different, changed world.
Q: The attitudes surrounding Covid are totally different in different parts of the country these days, too. The difference between Virginia and Colorado, for example, is huge.
Hannah: yea, both of our towns don’t even have a mask mandate anymore, so it feels like where we’re at, everything’s opening up, but we’re going out east, and the further east we go, restrictions are more and more strict. It’s been really interesting.
Q: If you had a truck and trailer, would you then have a support vehicle driver accompanying the trip?
Lisanne: We are excited to welcome Dustin Leinenbach to the team! We could not have found a more kind, dedicated and compassionate person to fulfill the role of our support truck driver. By happy circumstance, Dustin reached out to us about two weeks ago before we even posted about the position, asking about ways he could help the Mustang Discovery Foundation. Little did he know, we had the perfect role for him. Fortunately he is currently living right on our route, so we were able to meet with him in Indiana. Not only does Dustin have volunteer and horse experience, but he also does voice over work professionally. This project will be mutually beneficial for all team members. He's eager to learn more about the issues around the American Mustang and help us reach our common goal to help 5000 mustangs find good, loving, and educated homes.
Q: How many horses will you be taking, plus the mule?
Lisanne: We have 9 animals in play, total, right now, but not all of those are coming out east, we’ve limited it to 5 coming out east with us, and then rotating the other animals into play later on the route. I have 3 mustangs in play and one burro, and I believe Hannah has 4 mustangs in play and then we have the mulestang. So those are the animals that we’re looking to include somewhere along the way but not all at once. In Colorado, I would love to have a string of everyone going, but Hannah should touch on us crossing mountains and some of the hurdles that are greater than the mountains themselves.
Hannah: The reason we chose that route – ideally we were thinking, not that we wanted to copy Unbranded, but they had beautiful country, they went from Mexico to Canada. And there was also the Pacific Crest trail that we know people doing that as well, so it kind of made more sense, rather than venturing out east, to do that. As I’m researching, and sending Lisanne all this information about them, I was like, oh, hold on, I cannot physically do those trails. I have a genetic disorder called Sickle Cell Trait, which basically means I can’t handle extreme altitude and I can’t scuba dive. So it doesn’t affect me, except if I went into high elevation or something of that nature. Because of that, it’s easy to forget about, but I was really sad, and I was like, Lisanne, I totally understand if you want to do this ride still, I’m still supportive of it, but it’s just not possible, the trail ends here for me, you know, but she was like that’s ok, I’m sure we can find another one. So I started researching more, and the Appalachian trail was lower altitude but they don’t allow horses, so I crossed that one off the list. Then I came across the American Discovery trail. It’s not all completely horse friendly, and before we were looking at 4-6 months and this one’s a year. I was joking, here’s one but it’s a year long, and Lisanne’s like, that looks cool, we should check it out. So despite the obstacles and hurdles, it’s still happening. I live at 6,000 feet, I know I can handle that altitude, but when we’re talking elevation – my dad also has the trait, he lost part of his spleen at 10,000 feet, so it’s figuring out where I can camp…he just overnighted and within a few hours, had to be rushed to the emergency room.
Q: Can you not be at high altitudes at all, or just not for extended periods of time?
Hannah: it’s more for extended periods. I can hike up to high altitude, but I have to get back down within 6 hours, or whatever it is. But that adds an extra level of…we’ve talked about, do we make sure we camp right at what I can handle, get over the peak and then make sure we camp low, but if something happens in between there and we get stuck up there, then immediately, without anything even happening, I’m at a high risk situation, so we’re trying to talk about, do we go around? I thought the mountains in Colorado, the Rockies were going to be the hard part but actually Nevada and the Sierras in Colorado are actually going to be some of our biggest hurdles. There’s still a lot to sort out and that definitely adds an interesting twist to our trail, so we’re trying to figure out do we go a little south to lower elevation, do we find a pass, that sort of stuff we’re still trying to figure out.
Q: How are you funding the trip?
Lisanne: We’re doing some crowdsourcing, we’re doing some fundraising. The biggest thing for us fundraising-wise is, we feel pretty confident about gaining enough sponsorship and donation for us to be able to do the trip logistically, but we would really like to put together a documentary feature of equal quality or better to Unbranded. We’re looking at a $3 million quote on that, just having talked to the people that put Unbranded together, so that was pretty intimidating. That’s our biggest obstacle right there, is being able to put together a good-quality film or docuseries. I’m watching The Long Way Round with Ewan McGregor, and it’s the first trip they did, they’re riding their motorcycles pretty much from England, all the way through Kazakhstan and Russia, and then they take a plane into Alaska and then drive to New York, so pretty much as far as you can go around the world that way. It’s been fun to watch them, I really enjoyed how they broke that one up into a series, instead of an hour and a half or two-hour documentary, you’re getting 12 hours of footage to really dive into a lot of the questions, like logistically putting this together as far as permitting across places, and film permits, and the ability to ride our horses through the state parks and that kind of thing. So, I would really like to see what’s out there and what’s possible but I am really enjoying the series part of it. It’s just a matter of what we’ll be able to afford. We could strap on GoPros and just go for it and then tally up all of this footage and not have the resources to edit it on the other end, that would be really unfortunate.
Hannah: to reach our goal and make an impact, we want to make the impact of inspiring the adoption of 5,000 mustangs, which seems pretty ambitious, but if we were able to get something like a film…Unbranded was 10 years ago, and people still know of it, and still talk about it today, so it’s not that we expect that many to be adopted in that year, but it’s that lasting impact. If we don’t have a film, then I think once we do the ride, it’s just going to be a distant memory, but if we can get that film, it will keep what we did alive and that inspiration alive, and I really feel that that’s what’s so important about trying to make it work. It’s very daunting, and the ride itself is daunting, and then you add the $3million quote and it’s like, it’s worth the extra trouble if everything works out. It would be worth all the trouble. I think that’s the only way we’re really going to reach that goal.
Q: What are some things you’re doing during the summer to get ready for this ride, riding-wise and horse-wise?
Lisanne: I feel really confident about my horses and they’re making it really difficult to choose which ones are going to join me out east, but Hannah has never packed her horses at all except for just last week, so I think there’s a large learning curve there. My focus will be the mulestang this summer.
Q: Hannah, what are some of the things you wish you knew more about, with regards to camping and packing with horses?
Hannah’s mustangs on their stagecoach drive across Montana.
Hannah: I mean I’m really happy with how they did, it’s just going to be getting that experience. A year ago when I was traveling, I was supposed to be gone for 6 months and obviously Covid happened and that changed things, but there was a family doing a stagecoach drive, border to border in Montana, and they were looking for Mustangs, so 4 of my mustangs, which 3 of those are ones I’m going to potentially use [for this trip], they were a part of that stagecoach drive, so they haven’t packed but they’ve had so many miles in the harness. That has been really great experience, they were on roadways, which is a little different when they had the blinders on and all of that, and I didn’t understand why I did that at the time and it was a great experience, but they were the right people, I trusted them with my horses for 6 months, it was just so meant to be. And in hindsight, now, I just feel so much more confident in my horses’ abilities, just having that extra experience. Really just riding them in general, mine are all pretty green, and they’re at pretty good places, they’re safe, but they just need more miles in the saddle. I want to get them more used to riding in traffic, the packing they’re doing, the little bit of packing I’ve done, they’re doing pretty good. Just getting them used to unknown situations under saddle.
Q: Do you feel that there will be more obstacles in the east, where there are more people, more roadways, and help is never very far away, or in the west, where you will be in vast expanses of wilderness with dangerous wildlife and such?
Hannah: That’s what we’re used to! We’re looking forward to getting out west, if we can survive the east, we’ll be fine!
Lisanne: Yea, wolves, bears, mountain lions, I’m not scared of them, it’s the people I’m nervous about honestly. Drivers, etc. I feel comfortable around wildlife, there’s no problem there, I go through my safety precautions and I’ve been in the mountains a lot and I’m not saying it can’t happen but I’ve never had a problem and I’ve never been scared. But just being around people and camping…I love camping remote, when there’s no people it’s no worry for me, but it’s when people are around that I get worried.
Q: What are some of the safety precautions that you take for things like wildlife and being so far from help if something does happen?
Lisanne: You’ll always know it’s my string coming through the mountains because I sound like a gypsy caravan, I have bells on all my horses. So that way if one got loose, I could easily track it down and find it. The other thing is I think in the mountains, the problems that happen with wildlife are when the wildlife are startled. The bells let the wildlife know that something different is coming through the mountains, so there’s no chance for me to startle the wildlife or the wildlife to startle my horse. Unfortunately, because of that you don’t see too much wildlife. As far as safety goes, I think it’s better that way. As far as bears, I follow bear safety to a T, I carry bear spray, I’ve put up some really awkward, super-high packs up in the mountains, tree-hangs, rock-hands, whatever, just trying to get the food away from my camp. I always have a dog with me, too, which is another bear deterrent and definitely a mountain lion deterrent. The only thing that scares me up in the mountains is a moose, especially a mother moose. They’re just so territorial and they aren’t scared of anything. So that’s my only concern but even moose, it just seems like as long as you can tell where their baby’s at and you avoid them, they’re usually pretty good. I really want to borrow someone’s llama and get the horses used to that.
Q: Do you have any training on the human side of the backcountry exploration?
Lisanne: I have my WFR, Wilderness First Responder, so I feel pretty good about stabilizing someone if something happens as well. Of the 3 of us on the trip as far as Hannah, me, and a driver, as long as I’m not knocked unconscious, I feel like I can get us out of quite a few situations, so that was another safety precaution that I took before going in the mountains pretty deep.
Hannah: and we’ve talked about, in Montana there are some dog wilderness first response courses, and we’ve talked about that even applying to the horses, and our dogs are going to be a huge part of the trip. This summer we’ll probably be trying to touch up on some skills I feel like we should know. Also one of the dogs is a Belgian Malinois that I got about a month ago. A friend of mine who’s a breeder sponsored us with the dog, hopefully as a people deterrent. He can keep up with the miles but also hopefully add an extra measure of safety. Something to hopefully keep people away.
Q: Going back to the original intention for the trip, can you speak a bit about your goals for mustang adoption?
Hannah: Education is a huge part of this trip. As a trainer, I can only make so much of an impact with so many horses, but as a clinician, educating people is really the biggest part. We really want to encourage not just random adoptions or ill-thought-out adoptions of mustangs, but we’re hoping to partner with the BLM and the Mustang Heritage Foundation to do events along the way, not only to show how great these horses can be but also, there are people that shouldn’t own mustangs, and sharing more about the responsibilities it takes to be a mustang owner. I think that’s really important because we want these horses to go to good, loving homes. A lot of people like the idea of a wild mustang, but education is a huge part. Hopefully that’s something that maybe once a month I can do a clinic along the route at a facility that can handle it. Events like that and hopefully doing some work with schools or whatever the case may be, is really important.
Q: Where can readers and riders follow your journey?
