Einstein could have been a horseman!

If there is one theory that I find is pretty much universal it is “Everything is relative to the observer” You don’t know how many times I have worked with peoples horses and they have said, “ Oh my, he never did that before, it must be you”, or “ It is the different place, he never acts like that at home”. To which my response is, your right.

Now I will agree that horses will act differently in different situations. It is of course all relative. People have different feel and present things to the horse differently. Yet at the core, the horse, will respond pretty much as he always will regardless of the situation. As long as he has been exposed to the same stimuli. Take the gentle boy below. His owners are scratching their heads trying to figure out what I did differently (which generated the bucking fit ) vs. what they did.

Now I know the ladies that own him, and they are honest folks. So when they say they saddled him, and pony rode him around, well I believe them. The key things here is, we did it differently, and really worked for different results. That does not mean what they did was wrong… Well let me say this, since there was no train wreaks, what they did was not wrong, if there had been a train wreak, well then…. It’s a different story. Yet, in this case everything went off without a hitch for them, and their colt is responding as I would think any colt with the gentle handling they have given him would do.

It has been about 4 sessions with the saddle and the colt is calming down and getting used to the whole situation. In a week he will have wondered what he was worried about at all.. And regardless of when or who saddles him next, in whatever rig, this colt, will respond as if he has done it a million times. Yet I know you are asking, well why did he buck for you, and not for those ladies. The answer.. to paraphrase a song, is blowing in the wind. .. If it was a straight forward as, well I used a back cinch, and they didn’t. You all would nod your heads, knowledge in hand and never use a back cinch. But its not that simple. I wish it was. That’s why some of us spend $$ for awesome teachers and week long clinics, because we are trying to get better at communicating with the horse.

In colt starting you want to work out all the kinks, so when I get my arse on his back, I have a pretty good chance of staying on and giving him a full ride, walk/trot/canter. For most of you, the last thing your thinking about is riding at the canter on a green colt! LOL! Your happy enough to get the saddle on, and to walk around a couple times. But to make sure everything is checked out, so when they go back to their owners they are good citizens the colt starter has to check out everything. I cant risk a horse not knowing what the cinch’s feel like, or the stirrups when they bang around at their shoulders.

I need the horse to not grab their ass, so when the owner accidently jabs them in the gut they don’t go off bucking. I need them to bend so the cinches grab them, so they know what the saddle and rig feels like when they move, when it tightens around their barrel and be ok with it. They need to see my out of both eyes, left and right, and get used to the change. Then I know when they go back to their owners well, they got a solid foundation, that they can move away from pressure and be good citizens. That when they get out of trouble, instead of bailing by bucking and leaving the rider on the ground, they hang with them, and try to figure a way away from the pressure or spook they found. As a colt starter you got to find those sticky spots, so when your ass is on the line, your safe. Why, well you want to do it again right, with a different colt. Its damn fun!

The key take away here is what works at home may not work at a different location. Most colts get a sense of sleepy when you only work them in 1 location. Once you take them to a new location they act like they are on the moon. Change is good. Last thing you want is to start riding your colt at home, only to take them somewhere else and find out you got to start all over again. You should also get a little sloppy in your approach on the colts. An example would be when you saddle them. Let the saddle pad touch thier bellys, fall on the other side, bang on thier flanks. Some day you may be saddling and something like that happens, its good to know you got no buck there.

You got to play in different areas so you can find out where the buck is, where that sticky place is because in the end your just not starting a horse, your creating the foundation for the rest of that animals life, your building within them a safe place for them, and their riders.

Hi Ho!
LW