Kelly Wilson - Stallion Challenges

From the moment we first saw the Kaimanawas in the wild, we became invested in their ongoing survival.

Many of our champion showjumpers are horses that others had given up on they were difficult, misunderstood, injured or ill-treated and time and time again these horses have returned tenfold the effort and love we have invested in them. Most importantly, they enjoy life and thrive in the competition arena. They dont jump because they have to but because they want to, and its proved to be a winning formula.

But perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of our lives is our work re-homing the wild Kaimanawas; horses that would otherwise be destined for slaughter following the biennial government musters. From the moment we first saw the wild Kaimanawa herds in 2012 they have captured our hearts, and since then we have saved many wild horses.

One Kaimanawa that is particularly special to us is the 17-year-old stallion Major, whose journey to domestication was perhaps the most inspiring weve ever seen, and defied the popular belief that older stallions are too difficult to train. Although, tragically, we lost him just five months after he was mustered, his legacy lives on in 2014, Kaimanawa Heritage Horses (KHH) launched the nations first Kaimanawa Stallion Challenges in his memory. In its first year, this national training initiative ensured the survival of every stallion suitable for re-homing; horses that in previous years had been unfairly slaughtered due to a lack of interested people with the experience needed to save them.

In 2014 my first book, For the Love of Horses, was published and was instantly a best-seller; that same year, Television New Zealand (TVNZ) commissioned a television series called Keeping up with the Kaimanawas, which followed me and my sisters taming our wild horses from the 2014 muster. What started out as an unassuming project has catapulted us firmly onto the world stage, because of our innovative approach to raising awareness about the plight of wild horses, and has unintentionally made us public figures; sometimes it seems so far-fetched that we shake our heads in disbelief.

When we were first approached about a television series we quickly brushed it off we didnt want to be in the public eye any more than we had to, and we didnt need the distraction of cameras following us around while we were trying to focus on taming wild horses. But the more it was discussed the more we realised that television exposure could greatly benefit the wild herds and would ensure that they had the support of the public for another generation. It was something worth considering.

Questions still remained. For example, did the benefits to the horses long-term survival outweigh the negatives of the unwelcome invasion of our privacy? We knew that, if we agreed to do the series, our lives wouldnt be the same again, and so our decision had to be for the right reasons first and foremost, it had to be for the good of the horses.