Renae and Shane Bartosiewicz have both been riding horses since they were too young to remember, and they are still in the saddle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The couple met seven years ago at a mustang event that Renae Bartosiewicz won.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI won a saddle, and I still use it \u2014 it\u2019s a good saddle,\u201d Renae Bartosiewicz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI let her win that saddle,\u201d Shane Bartosiewicz joked. \u201cShe needed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shane Bartosiewicz grew up in Glenwood Springs, and Renae Bartosiewicz originally comes from South Dakota. Both ride horses professionally, sometimes on and off as their lives change.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three years after meeting, the two married on horseback, living in Crawford, Colorado before coming to the valley last November, settling in Parachute, and living in their ranch together with their seven horses, nine dogs, and herd of cattle, including two longhorns, with a broad view of the Roan Plateau.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shane Bartosiewicz recently rode one of their longhorns into Silt to get hay, but the horns almost stopped him at the doorway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got one horn in, and then he shifted and got both in, but got stuck,\u201d Shane Bartosiewicz said. \u201cI thought I should get him out of there before this gets real expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple recently acquired two mustangs to compete in the Meeker Mustang Makeover<\/a>, which began in April, and runs through Sept. 18 and 19. At the event, mustang owners will showcase how well they worked with their mustangs before the horses are auctioned.<\/p>\n Mustangs, or wild horses, and burros are being managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)<\/a>, who attempt to round up the horses when herds grow too large.<\/p>\n \u201cThey breed too fast, so there\u2019s thousands of mustangs, and when the herds get too big, they start killing each other,\u201d Shane Bartosiewicz said. \u201cThey fight over resources, food and water, and the herds become unsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of herd management issues, nonprofits such as Meeker Mustang Makeover use competitions to try and help disperse the herds and train them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s easier training a mustang because they still have their instincts,\u201d Renae Bartosiewicz said. \u201cThey move away from pressure because they were living in the herd, and they move around a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Horses that are used to pressure get desensitized to it, which can be harder for the Bartosiewiczs who use the older, Californio bridal style of training, the vaquero style.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes the horse a smoother ride, functionally perfect,\u201d Shane Bartosiewicz said. \u201cIt\u2019s like the difference between a Ferrari and an old pick-up truck.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bartosiewiczs have found that the vaquero style isn\u2019t very common in Colorado or further east, but they\u2019re training the current in-progress mustangs, Cash and Viento, in the style.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have other mustangs that we\u2019ve used the style on, and they\u2019re great horses,\u201d Renae Bartosiewicz said. \u201cWe trained them ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Cash, Renae Bartosiewicz\u2019s newest mustang, is younger than Viento. Renae is working on being able to saddle and ride him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s much better than he was when I first got him,\u201d Renae Bartosiewicz said. \u201cI can lead him around more easily, he still shies when something spooks him, like my chaps, the fringe was blowing and he didn\u2019t like that, but he\u2019s doing great.\u201d<\/p>\n Viento, Shane Bartosiewicz\u2019s mustang, is a little older than Cash, and is less high-strung.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes we got to almost wake him up, we have to tell him it\u2019s time to move,\u201d Shane Bartosiewicz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was able to saddle Viento soon after getting him, and is currently working on riding and training him.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Bartosiewiczs are also working on getting their mustangs used to human touch.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCash has figured out that it feels nice, getting scritches, and he\u2019s getting a lot better with letting me touch him,\u201d Renae Bartosiewicz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trained mustangs at the Meeker Mustang Makeover go for hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how well their trainers do from April to September.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Bartosiewiczs offer riding lessons for beginners to advanced, clinics in ranch roping, trail horsemanship, stock handling, colt starting, and problem solving, and horse training services for working ranch horses. They also offer stock dog training lessons, specifically for people.<\/p>\n For more information on the Bartosiewiczs and their dog, horse, and cow family up in Parachute and the lessons they offer, visit srlivestock.my.canva.site\/<\/a> or visit their Facebook<\/a> at S & R Livestock LLC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renae and Shane Bartosiewicz have both been riding horses since they were too young to remember, and they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-637153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}