CNN to feature Mustang Project
Lisa Ridgely, Record Staff Writer
Roswell Daily Record

A unique local program that helps troubled youth by pairing them with once-wild mustangs has garnered national television media attention. The Mustang Project is run out of Roswell’s Assurance Home, a long-term residence for abused, neglected and homeless adolescents, and will be featured on CNN as part of a story about a mustang project run out of a Colorado prison.

The Cañon City Prison receives wild mustangs from the Bureau of Land Management, which controls herd overpopulation in the West by capturing the horses, and prisoners there are involved in breaking the animals for use in centers for at-risk youth. Since 2000, Assurance Home has adopted eight mustangs from that prison, said Ron Malone, executive director.

Malone and a former Assurance Home resident named Robert went to Cañon City in mid-July to participate in interviews with CNN. Robert stole the show, however, Malone said, and by the time the news network was done with him, they said they had all the footage they needed.Malone isn’t at all sour about missing his chance to be on national TV, noting the important thing is for viewers to understand the story of Robert and Hercules, the home’s beautiful gray mustang. “It’s a wonderful thing for such a small little project like ours in Roswell, New Mexico, to be on CNN,” he said.

Another of the home’s residents, Daniel Hammitt, went with Malone to Colorado at the end of July to pick out a mustang. “I think you can learn a lot from these types of horses,” he said. “You train them to where they’re not scared of you and don’t buck you off ... I wish more people were like that.”The Mustang Project helps the facility’s youth by teaching them trust, patience and perspective while they spend months “gentling” and training the wild animals before they are sent to therapeutic riding programs nationwide.“It becomes such a wonderful therapeutic program for our kids because we have this philosophy: you have to approach a horse a certain way to get it to do the things you want it to do.

The same thing’s true with life,” he said. The project is only part of a wide range of therapies offered at the home, but provides a crucial element of daily life — fun.“We just use horses a lot for recreation and relaxation,” Malone said. “One of the most important things we can do with our kids is just have fun with them. ... It’s very therapeutic to just have fun.”Many teens at the home have not led happy lives, and have few good memories, he said, and don’t necessarily feel life can offer positive things.

At Assurance Home, teens have the chance to create happy memories and life perceptions are changed to reveal positive future potential.The Mustang Project contributes to that by offering kids a challenge and giving them something to accomplish, Malone said; learning how to gentle a wild horse symbolically mirrors the life turnaround of many of the home’s residents.“It feels good to kids whose lives have been out of control,” he said.Another benefit of this program, Malone said, is that the therapeutic riding programs are receiving much younger horses than they usually use, meaning centers may be able to use the mustangs for up to 20 years.

Hercules, the mustang to be featured in the upcoming cable news show story, will be the first horse used at a new short-term shelter care program for troubled and homeless youth called the James Ranch, run by the Assurance Home, that Malone hopes will open in Roswell sometime next year.“James Ranch is a project we’re excited about,” he said. “We hope James Ranch is going to be the best shelter care.

... It’s short-term intervention for kids who need short-term help, and we want to provide that service here in Roswell.” Additional shelters for abused and neglected children are high on the list of social care workers and providers in Chaves County, and the ranch will help meet the community’s tremendous need for such a facility, he said.“This project, we feel like, is really meant to be,” he said. “That’s the way a lot of things have happened at Assurance Home.”James Ranch is still in its planning and development stages, but Malone said when the 30- to 60-day stay facility opens, it will start out with 12 children. Like with Assurance Home, residents at the ranch will be referred by the Children, Youth and Families Department and the police.

The Assurance Home, a United Way agency, houses up to 14 residents from across the state, ages 12 to 18, at one time, and has been a Roswell fixture for nearly 25 years. More than 1,000 youths have been through the home in that time, Malone said, meaning that many lives have been changed for the better.“The most important thing is for them to grow up to be productive adults,” he said.

The project’s mustangs are purchased from the prison with sponsorship money — sponsors have included foundations such as the Hubbard Foundation, as well as individuals. Sponsorship is great, Malone said, because not only does Assurance Home benefit, but the horses are given to their recipient therapeutic riding programs for free.

Malone isn’t sure exactly when the CNN story will run, but was told it will be within the next month.