On Friday, August 24th, 2001, Betty was into her first year of retirement and it certainly seemed to agree with her. Living comfortably in a small East Bay San Francisco community, it was her daily habit to read the Contra Costa Times. She came across this article.

Being a former horse owner 20 years back and intrigued with their efforts, she decided to investigate. Finding that the Lamm's ranch was only six miles from our house, she decided to give them a call and see if she could contribute to the project. They were glad to hear from her and suggested she come on over. She spent some time with the Olympic horses and away they went to Salt Lake City.

Betty was enjoying her time at Kickin' Back Ranch and had struck up some new friendships with both Willis and Sharon Lamm, as well as the other folks who board their horses on their ranch.

Willis and Sharon had founded Least Resistance Training Concepts (LRTC), a non-profit corporation with chapters throughout the US, Canada and the UK, whose purpose is to gentle and train wild horses, mules and donkeys.

Now it was time to move on to a new challenge. She found that a couple boarded a Mustang named Lucky at the ranch, but Lucky had been so traumatized by humans in the wild that he would panic and hurt himself if approached by a human in a pen. There is a firm belief within the community of these fine people that Lucky was a survivor of this senseless act.  The Lucky Horse Rehabilitation Project, the program for which LRTC is based, was named in his honor! He was a special needs horse that required special handling.

Lucky became Betty's challenge.

She started by convincing him she needed to approach his legs since his hoofs had never been trimmed. By the time she was through, she could point at each leg and say, "Pick up!" and up it would go! As time went on, she spent endless days approaching him, attempting to overcome his fear of a simple towel, as a precursor of putting a saddle blanket on him. Once she was successful, more months went by and a saddle finally appeared on his back! She continued on with such practices as climbing up and down on a small footstool so he could get accustomed to her being higher than he was. Although Betty had never received any formal training on gentling a wild Mustang, a combination of common sense, her philosophy of "think before you act", unbelievable patience and the expertise of those at the ranch assisted her in making progress as time went by.

By the beginning of 2002, she had become so close to him, she wanted him for her own. Many of the folks encouraged her to adopt another horse since Lucky was so unpredictable, but she had made up her mind. For months prior to this decision, she had been agonizing over it, wondering if he would ever become a "horse". She approached the owner, who agreed with her terms - if, within a year, she had not made satisfactory progress with him, the owner would take him back and put him out to pasture. Everyone had told her it could even take years, if ever before she could ride him, but that was fine with her ~ she was there for the long haul.

In May 2002, she "took the keys" for Lucky and they became inseparable. Betty's routine was (is, and will continue to be) 4-5 hours a day, most times seven days a week, working with him at the ranch. She would come home and I would hear of the "good days" (Betty smiling) and the "bad days" (no smiles). I would listen to her triumphs and failures. But she was determined. He was her "boy" :)

During the fall, she came home with a story of how she had trimmed his whiskers on his face and had done leg lifts in the stirrups. The others at the ranch were amazed at her progress. Many were now able to approach and work with him when she wasn't at the ranch. But, the best was yet to come......

For months, she had been patiently working with him to make sure he wouldn't spook when she attempted to lift her leg over his back. She would briefly fling it part way over and after a while, he would stay in place. When I would ask, "Why don't you just get on him?", she would respond, "When the time is right".

I came home on Monday, November 25th, 2002, from a day at Thunderhill Park north of Sacramento, taking pictures of 56 Miatas (my passion) that were at the track. Betty was sitting there, drinking a glass of wine in the family room. I thought that was odd since I'd never seen her have a glass until I offered one. About two hours later, she told me to go check my email and there was the picture!! I was delighted, to say the least. I immediately went downstairs and gave her a hard time for the way in which she delivered the news to me, and she was grinning ear-to-ear! She later confided in me how, once she was on his back, she said to Willis, who was standing by, "Now that I'm up here, how do I get off?!?!". Here's the sequence of events.

The next day, she shared an email with me from Willis, as tears rolled down her face.

I guess you can tell how proud I am of her! In a short 15 months, she's become a full-fledged Wild Horse Mentor.

She and I are firm believers in fate ~ what's to be is to be. Her destiny was determined during the summer of 2001 as she opened up the paper to that article. I know my lovely wife is living her life to it's fullest, doing what she loves to do best, being with Lucky......