Saving the Spanish Mustang:
One Local Breeder's Story
By Lisa Broadwater

When most folks hear the word "mustang," they automatically envision the mixed-breed feral horses of the American West, currently managed and offered for adoption by the Bureau of Land Management. But when Kerry Remer speaks of "mustang," she's talking about an entirely different animal.
"Spanish mustangs are the old Spanish horses of the conquistadors; they are actually very pure-blooded," she explains. In fact, Columbus brought the first Spanish horses (which are descended from the Andalusian, North African Barb, Jennet and native Spanish Sorraia horse) to the New World on his second voyage.
As the herds dispersed across the country and into Mexico, the mustang — small, surefooted, extremely hardy and intelligent — became the preferred mount of Native Americans. However, as the Indians were forced west and then forced to assimilate into white populations, most of the mustangs were removed or killed off. Because the horses were considered too small for cavalry use, the stallions were often killed or castrated and replaced by larger, heavier mounts. As the Native American population declined in the late 1800s, so did the mustang population.
By the early 1900s, the mustang was nearly extinct. It was through the efforts of a few dedicated breeders (particularly Bob Brislawn of Oshoto, Wyo.), who sought out purebred mustangs among the now-feral herds, that the breed was sustained. What Brislawn and others, including Remer, were drawn to is the horse's fierce will to survive, its innate soundness and its keen mind.
Today, however, there are still less than 3,000 purebred Spanish mustangs in America. When Remer first discovered the Spanish mustang in the early '90s, she was living in California and training Andalusians.
"I'd compete in all the basic classes — English, Western Pleasure, hunt seat saddle, driving," she recalls. "Usually, the Andalusians, Morgans and Saddlebreds were lumped together in a show. I remember, we opened the Grand Prix arena at Del Mar, and judges from all over the world were there. Anyone who was anyone and their trainers were there. It was pretty phenomenal. I was having a hard time keeping my heart beating correctly.
"We just did a simple little expo with the Andalusians; I think we did a pas de deux and a few low-level [dressage] movements. And I came out proud as a peacock on this phenomenal 17-2 3-year-old Andalusian that was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I was so proud of him. And I went up to a Portuguese judge and asked him if this wasn't the most phenomenal Andalusian he'd ever seen. And he looked at me and said, 'You Americans ruin everything you touch.' And I thought, 'Wait?! What do you mean?'
"He said, 'You've changed their head, you've changed their feet. You've made him too tall. This is a bullfighting horse; you don't know anything about Spanish horses. If you want to see a real Spanish horse, there's a little bay horse down this row; it's called a Spanish mustang. That's a true Iberian horse.' So I went over and looked at the mustang."
What Remer saw, she says, was a horse "in such perfect proportion for everything. He had a noble-size head without it standing out from anything; a large, crested neck with a lot of muscle structure through it that flowed beautifully into the wither; and a back that wasn’t too short or too long; his croup had the perfect slope into the tail; probably the strongest hocks I’ve ever seen on a horse, all naturally put together. It was just an incredibly balanced, strong-footed horse.
"But I can see how we would look at him and think, ‘Golly, if he was just another hand taller’ or “If his head was just a little smaller'... And from looking at this horse, I could see how we’ve created all these different breeds in the United States."

A Good Eye
Remer realized that she knew a woman, Peggy Shackelford, who owned and bred Spanish mustangs (and had gotten much of her stock from the Brislawn farm).
"She lived maybe three miles from me," Remer says. "And I was riding my little Arabian past her farm twice a week to go train some horses down in the Valley, and I stopped in and got to know her even better.
"She was a fabulous breeder, and she had very good ideas of what she thought was right with the breeding. She bred very clean; she had a good eye for clean breeding and didn’t attempt to change the look of any of the horses. With Spanish mustangs, there are several looks. For example, there’s a Cerbat line out of Arizona, and they don’t have the hair length that many do. They seem to be a heavier-bodied type with a thicker structure and a very sturdy foreleg bone.
"I really liked what Peggy was creating. You could see all the different types there on her farm, which I really enjoyed."
(Ironically, Remer's first horse, which her parents bought for her 13th birthday, was a BLM mustang. She also had competed in dressage at the second level on a BLM mustang stallion — whose previous owners one year earlier hadn't been able to get near the horse — but was told by numerous judges she would only take a beating at the higher levels. "It was advice taken to heart," she says. "But I did continue to put upper-level moves on him and enjoyed him as a nice lesson horse.")
Her first Spanish mustang purchase, from Peggy Shackelford, was a yearling stallion named El Cortijo's Amante.
"I remember seeing him and thinking, 'Oh he's got a good-size head on him,' " Remer recalls. "Because I was very used to bigger horses and was trying to get okay with these smaller horses. And Peggy said, 'You know, there's a mare over there we've never ridden. She's 8; I'd like you to put her under saddle. The very first day, I rode her down the road in a halter and rope. I trained her in my old style: I had a halter and rope and got on her bareback.
"She was phenomenal — I clocked her at 27 miles an hour at a sitting trot, and she was barely 14 hands tall. And I had never ridden a short horse that could trot like that. But she was purchased by a little Western gal. So I went back to Peggy and said, 'I need more,' and started training several of her horses."
It's the mustang's disposition that really caught Remer's attention.
"I’ve found them to be incredibly honest," she says, "and for the most part, they think. Overall, their temperament is very willing, but if we do stupid things, they take it real personally."
Even before she discovered the mustang, Remer had always preferred the thinking horse.
"I was never one to enjoy or appreciate a dead-broke horse," she says. "I loved working with very hot, trainable horses. I enjoyed Thoroughbreds for a long time; I enjoyed Arabians, Morgans. I enjoyed horses that gave me a lot of fire but were very manipulatable. If you were with them, they were right there dancing with you. But if you were in a situation and in a panic and weren't quite sure how to fix this mess, they were in control."
Granted, she adds, "A thinking horse can sometimes be really disturbing to us. We want them to stand tied and stay in place and not break anything. And they might. But they might also say, ‘I’ve sat here as long as I’m going to, and now I’m going to have to break something.’ "
Mustangs, she has found, "are more aware. And when you ride them, they’ve very alert, attentive, athletic. They also want desperately to be your best friend, to the point where some of them are very doggy. They want you to totally focus on them and be aware of them."
Some Spanish mustangs are gaited, some aren't.
"It's sort of the luck of the draw," Remer says. "Until eight to 10 years ago, the Spanish Mustang Registry didn't really talk too much about their gaited horses. Then they realized they had some fabulously gaited horses with huge capabilities, and they were getting rid of them and not including them in the registry. But now they are.
"For a long time, a lot of the original breeders who gathered these horses up were cowboys, and they felt a gaited horse was kind of a pansy horse and sent them to the killers. It was real rare to get one that even ambled. Yet if you go back into history, the Indians loved an ambling horse, so they kept very clean and pure a lot of our Spanish mustangs.
"All of our American gaited horses come from gaited Spanish mustangs. If you look in the original breeding content, you'll find Iberian."

The Birth of Spirit Ranch
It was Shackelford who basically nudged Remer into breeding mustangs.
"I had one of Peggy's mustangs sold over and over," Remer says, "and she would ask me all about the people: 'Do they know what they're buying? Do they understand this lovely Spanish breed?' Then she'd say, "Kerry, don't you love this horse yet?' and I'd say, 'Gee Peggy, I've got 28 horses in training; yeah, I do enjoy riding her.'
"Finally, I asked her, 'Don't you want to sell this mare?' And she said, 'Don't you want her yet? And she actually set me up with several mares and two young breeding colts."
At the time, Remer's husband was very ill.
"Things were getting pretty rough," she recalls. "By '94, he had this feeling that he had to get me to grasp that I had too many horses for California."
So they moved to a 34-acre spread about 20 miles west of Fayetteville (which Remer now calls Spirit Ranch), in part because of the nearby VA hospital. With them came 22 of Remer's horses, including 12 mustangs. Shortly thereafter, her husband died.
Since moving to Arkansas, Remer has bred close to 60 mustangs. Her goal: "Saving the breed — and educating the public on how much influx into our American breeds these horses have had. But we’ve bred away from so many of the gifts they come with — the large foot and head, the stockiness, the compactness. Which is what gives them the sturdiness and endurance."
She's also keen on showcasing the horse's versatility:
"After that Portuguese judge said that to me [at the show in Del Mar], I felt like it was my calling to try to show these horses in such a way that the general public would no longer see them as just renegade mustangs, and for the general public to see that they were as capable and oftentimes even more capable than any other breed.
"Peggy had watched me do some things with Andalusians, and she’d say, ‘These guys can do that even better.” And she was right. My horse Santana gave me more in six months of his life than some horses I’ve worked with for years. It was amazing."
For Remer, educating the public about the mustang is a constant.
"So many people want to get rid of the word 'mustang' because when you say 'mustang,' people figure you must have a BLM," she says. "So for the most part, my time here has been educating people on the fact that they're not BLM. That doesn't mean a BLM mustang might not have a lot of Spanish blood. There are times where you can look at one and think, 'My gosh, that horse is mostly Spanish.' "
Because of the confusion with BLM stock, many Spanish mustang owners have shunned the name and the main registry, opting for new names — Spanish Barb, Cerbat, Sulphur, Kiger, Spanish Colonial, Wilbur-Cruce, Cayuse, Horse of the Americas, American Indian horse — and, in many cases, new registries.
That trend is one that Remer is striving to reverse.
"The Spanish mustang registry is strong, but so many people have pulled away from it," she says. "They don’t want their horses to be considered mustangs. I'm inviting all those people to blood-type their horses and in their breeding program to use DNA — to show proof of their Spanish heritage and keep it true. I've had horses bloodtyped through the University of Kentucky, and they've sent back readings that say 'This horse is as pure a breeding as if it had been bred in Spain; there are more Iberian markers than a good Spanish-bred horse from Spain.'
"The Quarter horse registry is starting to require DNA and bloodtyping. Rocky Mountain horses, Andalusians — everyone is starting to demand purity of breed. I'm kind of of the same feeling.
"Unfortunately, the [main Spanish mustang] Registry does not go with blood typing. But I feel that in a good registry we should have DNA. I want to know that the reason your Spanish mustang is 16 hands tall isn't because you've influxed an Andalusian stallion that might be happening by.
"I know I wouldn't do it, but what's to stop me from putting that big old Thoroughbred cross gelding in the registry; there's really nothing to stop me other than my own honesty. But this is the real world; not everybody's that honest. And when everybody's in their back yard breeding, what's going to stop them from letting that lovely Paso Fino that just passed through breed their mare?"
With that in mind, Remer is talking to a number of like-minded Spanish-horse owners about creating an umbrella group that would focus not on the look of an animal but rather on its genetic makeup.
"Because there are less than 3,000 Spanish mustangs in the United States, we need to unite, not argue and break apart and make the numbers harder and harder to keep track of. If there are that few, we need to all know each other."