This little horse came up from TX to learn about the real world. She's
what I would call an upper crust horse, raised in a very sheltered
environment. Ginger never had to deal with weather, stress, danger or
even the pecking order. She came to me, 200lbs overweight. I had to put
her on a diet, because her excess weight would not allow any saddle to
fit.
She'd had 10 days of riding as a 3yr old. She was now 5. The training
that had been done was gone, and between my son and me, we restarted
her. But she was gentle, so it only took a few days.
A left over from previous training was a serious
head issue. She would not, could not, grasp the concept of
giving to the bridle.
My son asked me "What are you gonna do about that head?"
"Nothing. It'll fix itself."
"You can't ride that horse in the yard with her slinging her nose up in
the air like that."
"Oh yes I can. All she needs to do is be able to go from point A to
point B when I tell her to."
He looked at me like I'd just turned green, and said "Suit yourself"
In this vid which was taken after 2 weeks riding in the yard, 3 weeks
total into her training with us, you can still see the left over of the
head issue. But it was coming, and I was happy with her. The work took
the defensiveness out, the correct seat and soft hands allowed her to
relax, and the my experience w/ similar horses took every opportunity
to encourage the correct reactions.
I had to be feather light w/ my hands, use huge amounts of support w/
my legs and seat, to never rattle her cage about that bit in her mouth.
I dealt w/ missed reactions and mistakes to my signals, while quietly,
calmly, teaching this horse to trust her rider.
This next video was taken 3 weeks later. Notice how soft she learned to be.
We were told to sort certain cattle out of a recovery pen. The vid
shows 3 different Charolais going out, w/ one black going out that was
ok to go too. When she goes up the fence after the second cow, that was
her very first time at going up the fence. She had just learned to lope
in balance not too long before that. You can see how well she takes my
guidance. Right after that I cut her taking the second cow up the fence
in her lifetime. No sweat, she knows what's going on now.
This little horse has a lot of cow blood in her, and I'm having to
restrain her from wanting to work the cows too fast and too
aggressively. But all in all, she's not doing bad for 6 weeks of
training.
This next vid is at 9 weeks of training, the day her owner came to pick
her up. We are both members of IPHDA.com, so I had her hold the camera
while I rode a L1 test.
I had never asked Ginger to stay collected for so long. Just a few
seconds, from the gate to the water tank, or while getting the fat
cattle up on their feet. I didn't really have a good idea of where she
wanted to pack her head while collected, so I kept her too tight. I had
no intentions of re-riding the test 15 times to get a good one. I just
wanted to ride it thru, tell her "good girl" and send her home.
But the vid shows how nicely she now accepts the bit, how well she'll
take direction and how easy she is to deal with.
She is an awesome little horse.
This little horse is a good example of what I can do w/ your horse.
While this horse certainly had the kind of breeding and conformation
that set her up for success, she was also a very tuff horse to teach.
Her resistance to the bridle made riding her quietly into a real trick.
I will soon add more videos off horses that are maybe not bred quite so
nicely, but the results will be very similar.
Buck The focus for Buck was pleasant acceptance of one
handed signals.You can check out the vid
for Buck... I used him to demonstrate how to use DRs
correctly.
He was another one w/ a very bad head issue. I only had him for 6
weeks, and the focus of his riding was different. He was never gonna be
doing any showing. His owner just wanted him to be able to pleasantly
work on the ranch, moving some cows, doing some sorting and roping,
tootle the grandkids around if Buck was so inclined. While we didn't
quite get to a true neck rein, Buck had a good start on it when he went
home.