Baby Steps

Sometimes when training it is necessary to go slow....really really slow.  I am currently working with a mare who is almost completely blind and it has been quite the learning experience.  Meet Bella,

Bella is a very sweet, teenage mare of unknown breeding who has been blind for most of her life due to neglect.  Her owner, Mary,  rescued her many years ago and has now decided that she wants to try to get her started under saddle.  To be honest, at first I did not have any idea where to start.  The normal protocol would simply not work in this situation.   After some consideration and a long talk with Mary, we decided to start at the beginning.  The very beginning.  We started with teaching Bella to lead.  Even though she was several years into her teens and had been led a lot during those years, most of the time she was only taken to a few known places, like in and out of pasture, or back and forth to the barn.  We needed to get this mare to be confident in allowing us to lead her ANYWHERE and know she would be safe.  She also had to learn the importance of "whoa" and to respect it each and every time.  We worked on that alone for nearly two months.

I have to give a huge amount of credit to Mary for laying a fantastic foundation over the years. She was and is completely dedicated to taking the time and doing the work that needs to be done for Bella to be as strong and confident as possible. She has worked with Bella extensively using clicker training and it makes a world of difference.  Whenever we introduce something new and Bella gets nervous, we can revert back to something she knows well and it helps to build her confidence.  And lately we have been introducing lots of new things!  As you can imagine, Bella is very wary of things that flap around or make strange noises, so things like saddle pads and the reins of a bridle take some getting used to.  We opted to go with a bitless bridle in order to keep things simple for Bella, and since it works off of pressure points similar to a halter, which she already understands.  Bella has worn a saddle in the past, so we simply had to reintroduce that to her.  And here we are about seven months later, with a fully tacked up, confident mare!

 

We still have a long way to go, but I am thrilled with how far we have come.  Good job Mary!

 

Building blocks

I work with a lot of horses who's background is unknown.  Maybe they are broke to ride, maybe not.  Maybe they have great training, or maybe there are big gaping holes in that training. Who knows.  So it is quite the guessing game for me to figure out what they know, what they don't, and what I can do about it.  I am currently working with a fabulous little quarter horse mare who knows A LOT.  I don't know much about her past, but I know she had some western training.  She stops on a dime, leg yields like a champ, and is one of the least spooky horses I ride.  She bathes, clips, ties and can be safely ridden by a novice rider.  So imagine my confusion when I realized that she does not know how to canter, or seem to have any idea whatsoever that she had a third gear.  Somehow, in her fifteen years of life she was never taught this skill.  It kind of baffles me, to be honest.  It seems so basic.

I decided to go back to the beginning and started off lunging this mare in a round pen.  At first, she would only give me a stride or two of canter before she would lose her balance and fall back to trot, but that was OK.  Even just those two strides were a big step for her.  Eventually she was balanced enough to make it around a full circle, then two circles, then three.  It was slow going.  As she got stronger and started to understand more, we progressed outside the round pen and onto a lunge line, then to under saddle.  I have been very careful to take is slow as she needs, she gets upset when she makes a mistake and I don't want to blow her mind.  It has been about six weeks and just the other day she finally offered me a relaxed canter that I barely had to ask for.  We still can only make it about halfway around the arena, but we are making progress.

A bit of an understatement

OK, so lets start with a fun one.  Awhile back I got a call from a woman who has a mustang cross that "rears a little".  She primarily wanted to do trail riding and whenever they would get to a point he did not want to go past, he would "pop up" and backpedal.  Apparently this "popping up" behavior was something that he also did with his previous owner, so it had been a habit for a long while.  Now I know that I am not an expert in problem horses, and I know that rearing is the scariest, most dangerous and totally unacceptable behavior a horse can have.  So to be fair to this woman, I told her I would not know whether or not I could help her until I met the horse and saw the situation.  I was prepared for something like this:

 

 

What I found looked more like this:

 

And that was just when he was asked to lunge.

 

The very first thing I told her was that there was no way ANYBODY should be riding this horse until the problem was resolved on the ground.  The underlying issue was actually a serious lack of respect and so we went back to the basics of establishing respect on the ground and on the lunge line.  There were a couple of hard and fast rules.  1.  His feet were not allowed to leave the ground in any way whatsoever other than to be able to walk, trot and canter when asked.  2.  He was not allowed to turn and look at me when asked to stop, because he would use this as an opportunity to challenge me.  3.  Forward was not optional.

 

I was very pleased to find that after just a few sessions he came around to being a very well behaved gelding.  He did not rear once after that first day and after awhile I felt confident in being able to ride him safely.  Our next challenge was to take him out on the trails and address the backpedaling behavior.  The primary problem was that he did not want to leave his buddies and so he would put on the brakes and back up.  Since we had already established on the ground that forward was not optional, this problem was minimal to fix.  We did spend about ten minutes circling endlessly as he walked backwards trying to make his way back to his friends, but essentially all I had to do was wait it out and let him figure out that it was so much easier to do it my way.  And once we made it to the other side of the field....there were cookies to be had.

 

Since then his owner has been able to trail ride him successfully with no problems and she is very happy with his behavior.  She understands that she will have to constantly maintain respect and we have some follow-up visits scheduled.  Overall I am very happy with the progress of this pair and I think they have a great future together.

 





Welcome to HKR Horse Training

I have been teaching and training for a long time and I never cease to be amazed at how much I learn from horses every day.  The intention of this blog is to tell the stories of those lessons.  The good, the bad, the funny and not so funny. 

Whenever I talk to a new client one of first questions is always "so tell me about your horse".  The answer to this question tells me A TON about what I am getting into.  Some people just start to gush about how amazing their horse is.  Some get kind of quiet and then say "well................................." which is then followed by something like "my horse rears a little bit".  Either way, there is always a reason why I have been called and this first talk it always enlightening.  These are the stories I intend to share in the hopes that the things I learn will be helpful to others too.  I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I enjoy telling them.