Buck Click Day 1 w/Sully

You know I want to talk about all the things I know. How smart I am and how witty my friends think I am. I want to talk about my horsemanship and how I am at the top of my game. But you know I cant. I survived day one of bucks clinic with a horse I think I may have had a total of 3 good weeks to work with considering all the rain and muck we have had to deal with down at the stables, and vacation and being sick. Well you know I could come up with a 1000 and 1 reasons why I didn’t have all the time I should have to take a steller student ( ie horse) to bucks colt starting clinic. But, I don’t.

So off me and “fondly” knucklehead go to the colt starting clinic. Where the are others in the class, some of which have already been saddled trained, and my Sully boy. Of course his name is Komet, but right now I call him Sully because he looks so sullen after I ask him for something.

But that is not what I wanted to talk about.

What I wanted to talk about was what Sully and I learned today. We learned we could get along. We learned about feel, and how it goes all the way down to the feet. We learned how a small thing on the surface can uncover a huge thing that was simmering under skin. How we “forget” what we are presenting to the horse, and how the horse can feel ambushed by us, even when we were trying to offer the best feeling we could. We learned how time and dedication, repetition and perserviance wins out over horse sense. How a gentle hand and a kind word can be rewarded with a nicker and a soft muzzle.
We learned how in a day, you can bring a horse and rider into the light, or in the same amount of time, you can have a renegade and an ambulance…
Firstly, when people talk about horsemanship, and all these different schools of horsemanship. I can only think of one thing. There is really one one school that works. Now of course works means a lot of different things to different people. Heck I saw a man today bridle a horse while it was shuffling around, eating grass from the ground, and basically ignoring him. He bridled it and rode it. Now it was not pretty, but he could do it. But does that mean it worked? Not to me. Didn’t work to me.
My horses should so a willingness, they should do what I ask. One thing Buck says is “I am a benevolent dictator, but I am a dictator. What I say, goes. “ With horses it has to ,otherwise they will end up running you over, and bailing out on you when you need them most. Yet, that does not mean kiddies you can be a nag or whip them, or smack them around either. No, its all about Air-Hair-Muscle-Bone. Its about giving the horse the best offer you can, and then if the horse does not pull through its about backing up your requesting and getting down to the feet. Yet it is also about helping set up the horse for success. Making sure the horse has all the tools it needs in order to get the job done, in a manner that is good for the horse. You don’t want to ask a pony to jump a 4 foot jump as the first thing it does. It will fail, and then if you whipped it to get it to go over the jump you build fear in the horse. Well you are never going to get anywhere with horses with that.
That does not mean I never bump my horses. I do. Yet I always make sure I ASKED first.

So that was one major take away today. Asking and Getting. What do they say? Asking is not getting, brother aint that the truth!

So Komet survived his first day with Buck. It was a major learning curve for him. We had homework we worked on while the horsemanship class was going on, and then after everyone packed up we worked some more. I finally see things coming together, but it took time and the guiding eye of people like Bonnie and Buck to help me.