Patience

Now two and a half weeks into work with Sham, I must say that I feel like we are gaining at a reasonable pace. After a couple days of touching and working on leading I felt good enough to take off his halter. He has been great to catch and re halter. He doesn't quite stick his nose in the halter for me but we work every day. I have to remember that everything is very new to him. He is still not sure about tying it but he tolerates it well. I am starting to see a good amount of trust and try coming out of him. Once I led him into the round pen we had some great break throughs. I started moving him around, and he was great, it took him a while to figure out how to lope the circle but he has it figured out pretty good now. I never had to work him facing me because that was the very first thing that I taught him in his pen at the barn. I started with the flag almost right away. I presented it to him in the exact same way that I presented myself to him and he handled it great without me holding him he just stood and trusted that it wouldn't hurt him. As a matter of fact there hasn't been too much that he has been afraid of. What he is afraid of however is the manner in which I present it. For example he didn't care about the saddle pad at all, even when I tossed it to him but when I swung way around and flung it like a saddle it upset him. I have learned to really prepare him for such things and prepare myself to keep going and not get upset if he spooks. He is quite a bit more spooky of me than Bailey was and that has helped me understand where he is coming from much more. It is easy not to get upset when I know he is afraid. After a couple of days of desensitizing with several things he learned not to blow away and to stick it out as long as he could. With this in mind I have been very careful not to betray this and push him away with too much pressure. I try to back it off right at the breaking point before he goes away. He responds well to this. If he does go I maintain what I was doing until he stops and relaxes, he has learned that this gets the object taken away quicker than anything. With these approaches I have graduated him to the saddle. He doesn't mind the saddle on his back near as much as he minds the act of throwing it on. I have saddled him 3 times now and worked carefully at it each time. The good news is, so far he hasn't bucked once. I have been told however to be careful, because he may be just caught in the moment and may soon try to buck it off. He does however look intelligently at me and at the saddle, so I remain optimistic. With his increased level of trust he has started testing the waters. Good news, I was ready for it. He tried to refuse going into the round pen, he has tried to bolt past me leaving the round pen, and he has tried to hustle back into his stall. I had already prepared him in the round pen, backing him up and sending him past me and the fence. With these tools I was ready to stop and correct these bad habits before they got started, I simply stayed steady with him until he gave in. Careful all the while to not get upset with him and turn it into a fight. He didn't take long to act like a gentleman. The next while I will spend working on more softness and ponying him along with Electra (my good mare). I will not rush getting on him as much as I can't wait to get in the saddle. I need to remind my self this competition is not about me, it is about the horse and helping him get into a long term home when I am done. I also need to remember that the contest is not who can get their horse broke first, it is who's horse is the most broke at the end. I am confident that he will be among the best in that category as long as I take things at his time. Until next time God Bless, BW

Slow and Steady

I wasn't able to go pick up my mustang, I was working in Denver on the pick up days. I sent a good friend of mine down to do it. This is where I got lucky, and God had a huge hand in it. They jumped me in a big bay horse, where I would have more than likely gotten in the truck and drove off my friend Serenity stepped out and took a good look at him. She noticed that he had an infected cut on his cheek that had some swelling. She brought it up to the folks there and they decided to give me another one. That is when Sham was run in, a cute little roan horse. He had to sit for a couple of days until i was able to start work with him on Monday morning. All I wanted to do was get him used to me on the first day. He is very skittish and uncertain, so taking my time was and is a huge priority. On the first day I simply put passive pressure on him and moved him around when he tried to leave and go away from me. Every time he looked at me I would over exaggerate taking the pressure away. Soon he was facing me consistently, even taking a couple of steps toward me. That is all that happened on the first day. On the next day I started approach and retreat in the morning after a while he let me get close enough to sniff and lip my hand, It was important to me that he took that first step. I didn't want to rope him. That evening we got the camera out and after a short amount of time he let me touch him, he had to make the first move to let me know that it would be ok. I pet him for a couple minutes then left him before he decided to leave me. The following morning I worked my way up to clipping the lead rope on. Once I got it, I put some pressure on his hind quarters, I was only after him following me with his nose, he tried to pull away a couple times. I simple held the pressure and the very instant he turned his nose toward me, released the pressure on the lead rope. I eased up to touching him everywhere I could within reason, (without exposing my self to getting kicked) and he handled it all fairly well. He was very weary but I have been able see him slowly letting down. One of the biggest feats of the week was fixing the halter. I didn't quite like the was the halter was tied and it was very loose. I started fixing it and he definitely didn't like the noise and my hands by his ears. It took a lot of working up to get it the way that I wanted it. He is now leading around his pen pretty fair, and is letting me catch him rather quickly. I don't want to take off the halter yet, but we will work up to that, in no time. He is showing me great signs of intelligence, and showing that he wants to trust me. I don't want to do anything to betray his trust like pushing him too hard, and too fast. I know more about what to expect at the show so I am taking a much different approach this year. I am not going to read up on too many other horses in the competition because I want to work my horse one day at a time at our pace. Last year I saw that others where doing things that I thought I should be doing and that distracted me. I hope to be able to get him to the round pen in the next couple days and then a lot more should start happening. I hope to have a lot more to report next week. Until next time, God Bless, BW