Zac

Another newbie has come to my home. Zac is a 7 yr old gelding who has been sitting in a paddock untouched for 14 months. The owners of the property say he came with the property and they want to breed QH's so have no interest in keeping him. I had him float up from Boyup Brook after it took over 2 hours to catch him. When he first arrived I was like "uh oh, what have i got myself into". Pushy, frightened and NO idea what was going on, he was all over the place. I started work with him straight away. First thing I taught him was to yield his HQ's AWAY from me. Last thing I want to see is a horses butt in my face! I then taught him to get put of my space. I cannot lead a horse that is walking on top of me. I did 3 10 minute session a day for 3 days and on the last day did it with the saddle on. He is a good horse, but just has no idea what is required of him. The day after he got here I spent an hour, a bottle of oil, alot of shampoo and half a bottle of conditioner getting his tail not to resemble a piece of wood. He can now swat flies without getting bruised. Today (Thursday) I worked again on the ground with the saddle on and he is coming down quickly. I stood up and down in the stirrup and laid across him but no one was home and I'm not quite prepared to get on this horse without someone being home as I'm not sure how he will go. He took very well to me standing in the stirrups so will give him a few more days and see how he goes.

Well yet again I have been extremely lazy updating this blog, so this is another catch up entry. Mickey has come along great! My last entry told how he dropped his shoulder on the right rein quite badly, so I started doing lots of walking corners with him. By that I mean, I concentrated on walking a straight line and focusing into my corner. When I got into the corner I applied a little inside leg just behind the girth, and little inside bend and then turned the corner doing a hindquarter yeild. At the next corner, I did the same but shifted my leg forward slightly and did a forequarter yeild by moving his shoulders. Eventually I was able to walk the arena in a square and thus was able to get him yielding his right side to the left and was showing him he could bend through his body. I have just picked up another horse, Zac, and he is showing me the same online. He does not want to bend into his right circle, but more on Zac later. So now I had Mickey bending better through his body, I thought it was time to try a canter. I always try the left first as this is usually the better lead and I can get an idea on what the right will be like. Put him into a nice steady, balanced working trot and asked. He surprised me by not speeding up to much to make the transition, but oh my god, did he make up for it in the actual canter! He hooned around pretty damn fast but I just sat and told him he was a good boy and let him go. He fell out of it after about 20 meters but thats ok. Did that a couple more times then tried the right. Holy crap! The right was pretty bad! He dropped his right shoulder and led with the middle of his neck and shoulder with his head on the outside. Is that possible? Well, he did it. I had to pull him up as he felt like he was really going to fall over. It is possibly the worst canter I have sat on, but thats ok. He got the right leads straight away so thats good? Anyway, for the next week I got off his back and practised transitions online. This is a brief outline on how I do it online.
All I do with horses who don't understand canter is I put them online (lunge, with NO gear) have them trotting nice and balanced and relaxed, warm them up a little, then I raise my leading hand and say "canter" in a sharp voice. Now of course most horses at this stage will just keep trotting and not even acknowledge I have done anything, so I then put the stick (whip, whatever) behind me, not at his hock, but behind me and keep repeating "canter" while I start flicking the whip and bringing it closer and closer to the horse until he breaks over. Basically I up the annoyance until he finds what I want. The second he breaks, and I mean the very second, I stop all sharp voice, whip, everything and bring my voice right down saying "good boy". Now what usually happens with green SB's that don't know how to canter is that when they break, they bugger off and drag you half way across the arena. Thats ok, I don't care what they do, how they do it, I still tell them they are good. After doing this a few times each way over the course of a few days, you will find you don't need you stick/whip. All you need to do is have a nice balanced trot and say "canter" and they break over. They will fall out of it, but again, thats ok. At this stage all you are doing is teaching the cue. When the transition was looking easier online, I jumped back on. Left rein first. Nice balanced trot, ask for canter and used my voice as well, and he pops straight in and what a different canter! It is still a little rushed and he does shoot his head up, but I sit off his back a little and ask his head to come low and it is actually not a bad canter, AND he is holding it fine now. Now for the right. I try to stay relaxed as possible and DON"T put the image of the last canter in my head. Same deal as left and BINGO! Much better! Still bloody awful, but not nearly as bad and he doesn't feel dangerous this time. Over the next week we do alot of canter and he improves heaps! After being with me for 4 weeks, I advertise him and have a handful of calls. A young girl has taken him for a week or so to try. I have explained to her how green he is and the work he needs and she is confident she can do it so I will call her at the end of the week and see how he is going. It is really hard to let them go sometimes and to cover my costs of feeding etc they can't be here for too long, otherwise I end out of pocket. One day it would be nice not to worry about the money side of things and just give them all much more time, but at this stage I have to rely on whoever takes them to carry on with the training. I won't be too sad if Mickey comes back as I would rather he go to the home that suits him most and not just anyone.