Being passionate about mules in the East is like being a hockey fan when the news reports last night’s baseball game but fails to mention the Stanley Cup. Mules tend to be overlooked in favor of hunter-jumpers and eventers, their elite, pedigreed cousins.
Out West, however, mules are all the rage, and nowhere is this better seen than at Mule Days events, where trained mules are auctioned off for thirty thousand or more, while others take part in rodeo exhibitions.
Training a mule is no easy matter. It takes time and patience. Mules size up everything, and a trainer must devote endless time to the perceived queries of a mule, and even then, there is a saying that a mule wants to see your resume before you get in the saddle. Those who have been lucky enough to have a mule finally trust them, are devoted to their steadfastness, courage, agility, and noble spirit.
They are the preferred equine in the canyons and the desert. Their wide-set eyes mean that they can see where their hind hooves land on narrow trails, and their peripheral vision means that even when loaded wide with saddle packs, they rarely hit a tree more than once.
A crossover moment happened in 2018 when a mule named Wallace the Great, after much controversy, won the British Dressage Show at the Summerhouse Equestrian Centre in Gloucester, England, becoming the Jackie Robinson of the dressage world.
Here at home, Merle and Raven will not be going to a Mule Days event anytime soon. They are couch potatoes, and spend their afternoons grazing, napping, and looking for treats. We don’t mind. We spend our days the same way.