It’s suddenly somewhere. Oh I don’t mean like a trip down to the oceanside. I mean our confidence. It’s not like we notice right off the bat. It’s a slow thing. We challenge ourselves more, we ride with more impulsion, we ask our horses for more. We ask for life in them, speed, quickness. We notice we are hungry for it. We notice we come off less, we catch temper tantrums sooner.. We start to notice we are speed junkies....
Yes... we start to notice we like a little danger... we like to press the envelope a little..
We our outside our safe zone.
We don’t know how it happens, but it does.
We hit a milestone. We feel alive.
The reason this comes up is yesterday I am back from a long trip. My horses have not been rode for 5 days or so and I have a lesson. Oh sure I could have bailed out of it, but you know, the first thing I did when I got back ( well besides sleep and take a hot shower), was to go check on my horses... LOL.. HorseFREAK!)
So here I am lesson on the first day back, I pull the colt out, you know because I want to take it easy... saddle him up and ride around a bit in the round pen with my trainer working on the lead change.. Well she says, looks good, lets go out on the trail..
Trail smail! our trails our woody, dense, dark and deep and my colt has just started to be able to lead back there without rearing or wanting to take off with me...
"What?" says I
"Trail" says she...
mutter moan grumble...
"Fine" says I "but you walk in front"
"Fine" says she as she strips her chaps. which I am figuring helps her run faster if she is not wearing them.
Well she had me busier then a one legged man at a butt kicking contest, do this, do that, turn here, back up there, soft feel this... gah! Then she says "Trot em"..
"You want me to Trot back here?!"
then I get the evil eye...
"Fine!" says I
Off we go at the trot.. My guy is a champ, up, but a champ.
"Ok" says she in a large cleared area " trot half a circle, lope the rest, then come down to walk"...
You know, I felt no fear about that, I had my reins situated, I had a good seat, and my colt was trying to listen back to me. Oh he was up, when the owner and his pack of dogs came thru he almost bolted between my legs, but I held him and he settled a bit. So we loped, trotted, stopped and backed up...
It was awesome.
Only a few years ago I could not ride in that back trial without coming off my horse. I actually forgot how many times I have slipped, been bucked, and fallen, rolled or just plain was chucked off Phooka or Lucy back there... And here I am, on my little chupacabra and I finally, finally am able to do the deal...
It takes time, you have to invest, it won’t come overnight, and your horse needs to trust you... and you, need to trust not only your horse, but your skills as a rider.
Hi Ho!
LW
Would you consider a suggestion to add to your more traditional training methods? If so, I can recommend Basic Training for a Safe Trail Horse available for less than $10 at Amazon. It contains simple, concise, and innovative ways to relate to a horse as if you are the alpha mare member of its herd. You can always speed a horse up but it is much more difficult to teach a horse to move carefully and deliberately. Begin with the most important word for a trail horse to learn: stand Upon obedience to that one word a horse can learn the meaning of many other one syllable words. For some illustrations (hopefully more to be added later) check out You Tube for "granny with a trail horse."
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