What we're learning

The longer I put something off, the harder it gets. Case in point, I've been meaning to share some video of India's training that happened several weeks ago and events just conspired against me. So, one week passes, then two, and now it's been three and I am tempted to throw my hands up and let another night pass without posting. But then it occurs to me that I could post them over the course of several nights and suddenly it's not so overwhelming.

Ok, a little backstory. It's been fascinating to me to watch Jenny progress with India. I've never had a green horse before. My first horse that I got when I was twelve was ancient and very well trained, which is how it should be for a young girl's first horse. There's an adage that I believe: The age of the child and the age of the horse should equal thirty. With that, you're pretty much guaranteed that the horse will be safe for the child, and as the child gets older and more experienced, hotter horses can be ridden safely.

Which is where I've progressed to now. Now that I'm well over thirty, I'm riding hot ones. I like Thoroughbreds. They're responsive and twitchy and yes, Asia can be a handful, but I find her a joy to ride. And although Asia came to me with quite a few hours of saddle time, her formal training has been rather sketchy. Sending her to Corrie was the best thing I've done for us, and Grits has been wonderful about helping me with jumping Asia. But just because I ride well enough that I don't get thrown ::knocks on wood, for is that not tempting the fates by making that bold statement?:: doesn't mean that I know squat about starting young horses. However, I do know enough to find someone who does know what to do and I found Jenny.

How do you teach a horse to tie? How do you teach a horse to stop while being ridden? How do you teach a good mind? How do you teach calmness? Those are things that I knew nothing about and reading books, while a good start, are not enough.

Let's start with tying. If you tied a young horse to a fence and walked away, within ten seconds that youngster would reach the literal end of its rope and the figurative one is a split second behind. The baby would panic, pull back, and if the halter or rope didn't break, injury to its head and neck would happen. Once the halter did break, the baby would run off and bad experience is all that the youngster knows of being tied. Horses are prey animals. They run when they're scared and not being able to run off is scary.

But we need horses to stand tied. They must stand tied to the fence, to a tree while we eat lunch while on a trail ride, to the side of the trailer while we tack up and untack, in the barn while the farrier works on their feet. It's a fact of life for the domesticated horse.

So how do you teach a horse to tie? You start by looping the lead rope around a pole in a round pen and a helper, standing outside the pen, holds the end. The trainer, inside with a flag on a flexible stick, stands behind the horse and waves the flag at the horse. The horse moves away from the flag, but runs into pressure from the lead rope, keeping it in one place. The horse can move from side to side, but can't get away. The trainer doesn't put so much pressure on the horse that it panics, and the horse learns to move away from the pressure and to keep slack in the lead rope. This is called flagging a horse.

Jenny did this with India more times than I can count. I was standing outside the pen holding the end of the rope, ready to release should India get herself in so much trouble that she was going to hurt herself, but we didn't want that to happen. We didn't want her to rear, but if she did, I would hang on and support her head so it didn't crash to the ground should she go over backward. It never came to that, not even close. No pictures of the earliest ones because I was holding the rope, not the camera.

Over and over the flag was waved and India learned to move her feet, to get away from the pressure and to keep slack in the lead rope. Such an important lesson for a horse that is moving its feet is not one that's going to explode upwards. It's not trapped. Watch India demonstrate how well she's learned this. This video is from just a few weeks ago when India is actually tied to the round pen and I'm no longer holding the lead rope as it's looped around a rail. Jenny is careful to not push India too far, but India is outside of her comfort zone. Jenny has a folding knife tucked in her chaps should she need to cut the lead rope, but we don't plan on that ever happening. Prepare for the worst, but work to keep things safe.



India's been doing this pretty well for several months now, but repetition is the key. Over and over Jenny revisits things India already knows. Reinforcing the idea that she can stay tied and move her feet and not panic and years from now I won't be buying a new halter for India as I'm doing for Asia. Asia has had tying issues since I bought her and Sunday morning she was tied to the side of my trailer while I was at Joanna's. She was in an antsy mood and with no warning she leaned back, hit the end of her rope and panicked. I was near the front of the truck getting something out of it (saddle most likely) when I heard the struggle begin and by the time I got to her (only 10 feet away) she had broken the halter. The safety knot I had in the lead rope was useless by then. I use a leather halter on her precisely because I want the halter to break, which a nylon won't. It would have been better had I gotten there in time to release the lead rope, but I didn't. It happened that fast.

Before the year is out, Asia will be visiting Katie's for work with Jenny in the round pen getting flagged. I expect she'll panic and it will be scary for a bit for both of us, but she will work through it and learn to move her feet and keep slack in the lead rope. I'll probably always use leather halters on her for my background is english riding and leather halters are traditional in this discipline and I am not a rebel. Besides, I really like the way they look and I've ordered another with a brass nameplate on the side. The one she broke she inherited from Spooky (RIP, dear Spookmonster) so she needs a halter that's all her own. I'll post a picture of Asia modeling her new halter once it arrives later this month. In the meantime, I have a nylon halter that she will wear when I'm tacking and untacking her and I will not tie her to the trailer with it on.

India has never broken a halter and I hope that with all this good training on moving her feet and not panicking, she never will.

Tune in tomorrow when I post video of Jenny sacking out India. You won't believe the difference a few weeks and good training make.