Progesso

About three months ago I was asked to start a little 3 year old quarter horse named Topper.  He was not completely untouched; his owner is a very good horsewomen and she had done plenty of work on the ground, but she had no desire to go through the trials of starting him under saddle.  He had been worked on obstacles in their arena and she had sacked him out with bags of rocks and bottles.  He longed on a line, but would consistently pick up the wrong lead.  He was sweet, but just a little spooky with new things.  I've worked some horror story horses that looked like they wanted to bite my head off and eat my insides, so this guy was going to be a cake walk.


I started with correcting the longeing issues.  That was pretty easy, I just had to shorten the line up a bit so there was more contact and voila.  Then I went to work on trust building and getting him to let me rub him all over.  I ran into my first hiccup when I started to bounce along side of him.  He would have a big spook then let me in long enough to make me think that he was over it.  No big deal, I've run into this before and I just had to keep at it.  I must have hopped all over the arena with him. Just when I was about to stop hopping, he would spook again.  Crap! I couldn't stop now or else I would only make it worse.  Sure enough about twenty minutes later I got to a spot where I was able to stop before he jumped away.  I was drenched in sweat from hopping up and down, filthy from the dust kicked up sticking to my wet body and exhausted from the effort.  Awesome.

The next week, I was practicing laying on the saddle and he would consistently take off when I got up there.  Normally I just push off, bring him to a stop and start again.  Well, one of those times my foot wouldn't come out of the stirrup and I wasn't about to push off without my foot free.  So I went for a little ride before I was able to work my boot loose and gracelessly plunge to the ground.  Super.

The next week, I was on and taking him for his second ride.  I was smiling, my client was watching from her window smiling, all was hunky dory.  Next second, I was on a crazy running bucking monster and in the blink of an eye I was sailing through the air.  I've had my share of unintentional dismounts in my life, but this one I was dreading. My back or hip or something down in that area had been bugging be for a month or so and now I was about to land directly on that damn sore spot.  Sweet.

Photo by: Robin Campbell

The next week, I was taking him on his first trail ride with my client and her horse.  We were plodding along, I was talking to Topper and petting him and doing all the things I tell everyone else to do.  I was bending a little bit here, making him step slightly over there, just keeping his focus on me.  My client’s horse spooked hard and side stepped off the trail. Topper being the over achiever that he is, spooked twice as hard and again I found myself plummeting to the earth.  Amazing.

Photo by: Robin Campbell

The next week, I was riding alone in the large arena next to my client’s house.  We were working on making perfect circles.  I am a hard ass for circles and we were nailing them.  Sure enough, it started with him looking at something on the ground we were approaching and ended with him jumping sideways away from it and running like a nut.  The only difference was this time I managed to hook my wrist around the horn and stay on.  The whole time he was running away in his spook I was able to pull a rein and try to stop him.  About fifty yards from where the spook happened, he stopped.  I'm not going to say I know what horses are thinking, but I could swear he gave me a look of, "What are you still doing up there?"

Progress and learning are not always pretty.  If you are actively pushing the boundaries you are bound to run into struggles.  Embrace the idea of facing challenges.  As long as you push and find a place to end on a good note you will make progress.  I'm not saying you are going to have the same struggles I had with Topper, but unfortunately that is how it played out with him.

I am happy to say, after the spook in the arena where I managed to stay on, Topper has not spooked like that again and we have made heaps of progress.  I rode him this evening in that same arena.  There were two other horses being ridden much older than him running around throwing their heads, and all around misbehaving.  Little Topper stood still, looked at the chaos around him and sighed.