Horse trainer working out of Lebanon Co. farm wins big in Las Vegas competition

Justis Jacobs, a horse trainer who works out of Swatara Township’s Long Acre Farm and Feed, won first and third place in a Las Vegas competition in July with two of the wild horses he works with.

First place earned him $50,000.

The Mustang Challenge starts several months before the actual competition, when trainers can get a wild mustang from the Bureau of Land Management. These horses are not accustomed to human interaction, so the process has to start with building trust between the animal and trainer, Jacobs said.

“You have to take it out of them on the first day, the first time you work with them. You have to really set the tone like, ‘Hey, I’m not here to hurt you,’” he said. “Once they realize, I can put my hands on them and work my way up to them.”

Jacobs worked with America’s Most Wanted and Angel Eyes, who took home first place and third place, respectively. America’s Most Wanted will head down to North Carolina, and Angel Eyes will go to a client near Carlisle.

Jacobs said he scouted over 2,000 horses before deciding on these two, who he described as “probably two of the best ones” he has ever trained.

“[America’s Most Wanted] was extremely easy going, never had a lot of ‘no’ to her. Extremely good personality, fairly easy to start. Anything I point to, she was just game for it,” he said. “[Angel Eyes] will sit there, walk up to you in the pasture, put her head on your lap, want you to pet on her. I got two mares that were extremely friendly, extremely good work ethic, and they don’t have a lot of no in them. They just have so much try.”

After nine months of getting them used to humans and their special training, they traveled to Las Vegas for the competition.

The first two days of the competition are for preliminary classes, where competitors are scored on trail, reining, and ranch riding. The trail class shows a horse’s ability and willingness to perform several tasks that could be requested during a normal trail ride. Reining shows the horse’s movements as they perform stops, spins, rollbacks, lead changes, and circles at a lope. Finally, ranch riding measures the horse’s ability to be a good animal for the rider.

The top 10 highest-scoring exhibitors from these classes move on to the Mustang Challenge Championship Finals.

The Saturday night final scores are based on a compulsory maneuver score and a freestyle performance, where exhibitors are meant to show the horse’s athletic abilities in an “exciting and appealing way,” according to the event’s website.

Jacobs said the Mustang Challenge is different from any other competition in the world because they are working with wild horses.

He estimated over 200 people picked up horses, and around 50 showed up in Nevada to compete.

“This competition is extremely hard because you have so many factors, and a lot of the stuff that really makes or breaks this competition happens before the competition even starts,” Jacobs said. “It is a wild ride trying to take a wild animal and getting them to be a showhorse.”

The competition’s goal is to move these wild horses kept in the Bureau of Land Management’s holding areas into private care. This decreases the wild population, reduces the cost of care to taxpayers, and protects rangelands.

Kim Longenecker, owner of Long Acre Farm and Feed, where Jacobs boards and trains the mustangs, said this success comes from his dedication.

“He’s here at 6 a.m., and then is here training and training and training until 7 or 8 at night every day,” she said. “He just puts the time in, and he’s dedicated, and he’s just really passionate about what he’s doing.”