Ticket the mule and her rider Shane Lesher (Road to the Tevis Cup # 49)

When I shared my post about the 2021 Tevis Cup and asked for suggestions about further blog posts, many people wanted to hear more about Ticket the mule and her rider, Shane Lesher. (See their Tevis 2021 profile.) Shane isn’t on Facebook, nor a current member of AERC, but fortunately Garden Valley Feed & Hardware, the store his wife and he own, has a Facebook page. I left a message, and a manager was kind enough to reply and forward my phone number to Shane. He called me right away, on a Saturday morning, no less. I was riding at the time, and he was camping so I agreed to call back Monday.

By the time I was done riding and working Monday, it was late afternoon. Shane and I ended up talking the next day. This gave me a bit of time to prep for the interview, but I didn’t find much. Shane was not an AERC member. That made the story that much more interesting!

See this story in the Georgetown Gazette!

Talking with Shane Lesher about Ticket and Tevis

I loved interviewing Shane. His enthusiasm for the sport and his love for Ticket shone so brightly I wanted to go out and get me a mule, preferably one bred for racing, like Ticket!

When I interview someone, I always have a list of questions to ask. With Shane, I really didn’t have to ask anything. He just started talking, and answered most of my questions before I could ask them. I did get the first one out though: “Tell me about Ticket!”

Ticket the mule

Ticket (short for “Bar JF Lotto Ticket”) was bred by Pauline Ferguson of Bar JF Ranch for racing, out of the Thoroughbred sprinter “Hold All Tickets” and by the Mammoth Jack “Sweetwater Sterling.” She’s from a line of “Tickets,” many successful on the track.

Some background on Ticket, from her breeder, Pauline Ferguson

Ticket’s siblings include of the fastest mules on the track, such as Hall of Famer Bar JF Hot Ticket and full sister Bar JF Red Ticket.

“Lotto Ticket comes from a very famous line of winners,” Ferguson told me. “She loves what she is doing now with Shane Lesher. Endurance racing is her sport! All mules of this breeding and sired by this jack are athletes.”

Ferguson is proud of her mules that go into the endurance world. She bred another mule, Candyman aka Hondo, by Sweetwater Sterling and out of a Thoroughbred/Appy mare, that has had a successful endurance career. “We might have more out there,” Ferguson texted me, “just haven’t been notified by anyone else on their success!” (So if you’ve got a Bar JF mule doing endurance, let us know!)

Endurance is a great option for mules bred for racing that don’t want to race. If mules like racing, Ferguson told me, “they are speed demons!” But if they decide they hate it, they won’t run.

Ticket’s sport is endurance, and her human is Shane Lesher

Because Ticket wasn’t interested in racing, Shane was able to buy her in 2018. He bought her for his wife, but Ticket has become his mule.

(I asked Shane if his wife had ever said, “Hey, that’s my mule you’re doing Tevis on?” He laughed and said his wife was wonderful and supportive of his endurance endeavors.)

Ticket wasn’t Shane’s first mule. After a lifetime riding horses, he got into mules in 2016, buying several that were completely untrained–“Couldn’t even catch them,” Shane said. He was halfway through training them when he bought Ticket.

Ticket was completely different. Within a short while, Shane realized that not only was just an all round great animal, but that she had the potential to do Tevis.

Taking Ticket the mule to Tevis

Shane had thought about Tevis before he found Ticket. In fact, he told me that as soon as he heard about Tevis, he wanted to do it. (Yep. That’s how it was with me!) Owning Ticket put him in the position to do Tevis. In May, 2018, he decided he was going to do Tevis with Ticket that year.

This is the part of the story I love:

Shane didn’t really know much about endurance, so he called the AERC to find out what he needed to do to ride Tevis. That’s when he found out about the 300-mile rider requirement. He got those miles pretty quickly, 200 of them within one week. On Saturday he rode 50 miles in Nevada (on Ticket), and then went back close to home to do the Wild West Pioneer Ride. He completed two days on Ticket and one on a loaner mule, Bizmo (half-sibling to Ticket, by way of the sire, though not bred by Bar JF). (I too tried to meet the 300-mile rider requirement at Wild West, but was unsuccessful: read about it here.) Shane had previously completed the American River Classic on the mule “Delmar” and at least one other 50-mile ride (Shane didn’t tell me, but it was on the Arabian Estavan, in the 2017 Gold Rush Shuffle Pioneer Ride).

Shane got his 300 miles and entered Tevis for the first time in 2018. He and Ticket completed in 35th place.

Think about it. Shane got Ticket in 2018. Ticket told him she had the potential to do Tevis. He called AERC, realized he needed to complete 300 miles, did it, entered Tevis that same year, and completed.

Shane and Ticket completed Tevis again in 2019. In 2020 there was no Tevis because COVID. But they came back this year and are three for three.

How did they do it?

A good mentor

Shane gave a lot of credit to his mentor, Frank Smith. Smith has 11 Tevis completions–with mules! (See his AERC record and this 1998 interview with Anvil magazine.)

(Can I say again that I want a mule? Maybe Fantazia wants to make a mule after she makes a Morab.)

Conditioning

“Ticket always has a lot of forward,” Shane told me. “She’s always happy to work.” The main thing he has to remember, he said, was not to over-condition. Mules are so smart, they know how to preserve themselves. Doing 50-mile rides was an important part of conditioning for Ticket’s first Tevis. At home, Shane does a lot of steep hill work, in the heat. He doesn’t do a lot of trotting, he says it just doesn’t work with mules. Instead, he has had the most benefit from climbing steep hills in the heat.

When I was listening to Shane, it sounded like the most important part was building the partnership with the mule. He quoted his mentor Frank Smith to say, “With mules you spend most of your time convincing them that what you want to do is their idea.” With a lot of patience and fairness, the rest sort of works itself out. And if a mule trusts you, she’ll do anything for you.

Riding Tevis

Shane says, as many successful endurance riders do, that he treats Tevis just like any other ride, going from one vet stop to the next. He weighs 230 lbs and rides in a Western saddle, which adds at least another 40 lbs. (Shane mentioned this early in our interview, saying Ticket is a phenomenon.) So Shane and Ticket don’t go as fast as the horses, especially those with lighter riders. On the other hand, mules are amazing at night; Shane said he just sits tight and focuses on staying on the mule. Ticket is surefooted and confident in the dark, twisting and bending as she picks her way down the trail.

“We’re a grind,” Shane explains. “We just stay steady, we don’t try to go fast and we don’t go slow. We make up the time at night time, the best part of the ride for me, a little bit of an adrenaline rush.”

This year’s Tevis, Ticket was even better than before. She’s always forward, “always has a great attitude,” Shane told me. “I never have to kick, she just goes.” But this year, Ticket was exceptional. “She was very motivated by animal in front of her, I had to hold her back.” She has a lot of forward… happy to work.

The Tevis Cup Facebook page has a video of Ticket and Shane finishing (sadly it won’t embed): https://www.facebook.com/TevisCup/videos/195971642487323

The take-home

Before ending the interview, I asked Shane if he had anything else he wanted to say. His answer: “Just that I am very passionate about this. It’s so exciting!”

Yes, that passion shone through. This is someone who loves his mule, loves riding her, and loves Tevis. Actually, I’d guess Shane loves mules generally! He told me he’s got another mule, Delmar, who could also do Tevis. Shane’s 25-year-old son would ride him. You can see Daniel and Delmar in front of me in the video below, at the Fire Mountain Pioneer Ride (January 2022). In front of them are Shane and Ticket.

So we might have a father-son team of mule riders to watch next year!

Other press coverage relevant to Ticket the mule and her rider

I didn’t spend a lot of time looking for online background information, because I was going to be able to ask Shane. The one google search I ran provided one interesting piece: the Georgetown Gazette published an article about the Lesher family in 2018.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one interested in talking with Shane, though. There may be more articles to be added to this section soon!