Logan Leach tried his hand at several jobs. Armed with his business finance degree and his Nebraska cattle-ranching childhood, he worked on a dude ranch in Colorado.
Later, he did some construction jobs and landscape design before he joined the Border Patrol. But his heart remained tied to the horses he grew up with.
Leach realized that after watching his father train a wild mustang in just 90 days.
Seven trained mustangs and 14 months later, Logan Leach is a full-time horse trainer in Tucson and the most recent winner of the Extreme Mustang Makeover, a national competition put on by the Mustang Heritage Foundation and the Bureau of Land Management.
The challenge: Sign up to take a wild mustang home from the holding facility on federal land where the horses live in managed herds, bring it to your stables, earn its trust and train it to follow your commands from stirrups or reins. Oh, and do all of that in three months, then execute a designated pattern of reining movements in competition.
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Leach took home the winner's ribbon, along with $3,250 and a large gold belt buckle, for earning the top score in the competition earlier this month in Fort Collins, Colo.
He did it with B.I.G., a smaller horse - the name is a joke - not quite ideal for the competition, Leach said.
"I was sitting in second with a horse with barely any natural talent; I knew the only way to win was bridleless, and I had never ridden him bridleless," he said.
Nonetheless, he slipped the bit out of the horse's mouth and took the bridle off B.I.G.'s head. Leach tossed it, reins and all, out of the arena during his final round of the competition.
Sure enough, the horse followed Leach's directions, even turning around in tight circles and backing up without reins.
All the competing mustangs are up for adoption after the event. The Mustang Heritage Foundation was created to increase the adoption rate of wild mustangs throughout the country.
"With performances ranging from the calculated moves of a reining pattern to a stunning display of solid horsemanship and trust, the audience was mesmerized by the performance," the foundation said in a news release about Leach's win.
At their stables on the eastern edge of Tucson, the Leaches train many other horses.
"A lot of this business is colt starting. This was geared for 90 days; that's the closest thing to colt starting out there," said Logan's father, Lanny Leach, explaining why he started competing in the mustang training years ago.
This week, Logan Leach was working with a quarter horse from Texas - stubborn upon arrival, but making progress.
Four-year-old Sandy got a bad start, Leach said, as he walked her out of her stall for her daily training session. "Whoever started her didn't abuse her, but didn't help her through her issues," he said.
After a warm-up in a small arena, the training session starts out slowly. Leach gets a feel for how the horse is acting and reacting.
He explains that Sandy wants to go to the far end of the arena, which he says is because that's closer to her stall, where she will soon be fed.
Instead of fighting that, he lets her go there, where the two move in tight and wide circles. When she needs a break for air, they head back to the near end of the arena.
Once she's had a breather, they head back to the far end to resume training. The practice continues, without a word between rider and horse. For about an hour, even when she's resisting his direction, they don't appear at odds.
"She's telling me she's trainable. She's been told by four different trainers that she's untrainable. They don't know what to do," Leach says.
Sandy's movements kick up dust on the dry, late afternoon as the sun starts to ease down in the west. "It's no different than kids. You put a little pressure on them and ask them to try, and when they do, you release the pressure," he said. "They don't learn through punishment; they learn through pressure."
The mustangs take several weeks to trust the people working with them. Once they do, they bond more closely with their trainers than most other horses, Lanny Leach said.
In a nearby small arena, Lanny Leach mounts a mustang, the second time this horse has had a rider.
Logan and Lanny are preparing for their next challenge, the Supreme Extreme Mustang Makeover. This time, each adopted a 6-year-old mustang to train for a chance at $100,000 in prizes. The stakes are higher because the older horses can be harder to train. That competition commences in August in Fort Worth, Texas.
On the Net
Watch Leach's winning performance on YouTube: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CLyb8i_33dU
Contact reporter Andrea Kelly at akelly@azstarnet.com or 807-7790.
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