Having recently parted company with the last horse owner I was working with, I decided that a break from horses was the best thing at the moment, until we have moved house and got ourselves settled at our new location.
When you don’t own your own horse it is really hard saying goodbye to the ones you have been working so closely with. Over the past five and a half years, I’ve watched the two geldings I was working with grow up and develop into, fine, very well-mannered horses with bags of potential. Their mum, who lives with them is adorable, her two sons tower over her now, as does the filly who joined the tribe nearly two years ago. I’ve learnt so much in that time about handling young horses, general horse care, and field management, which I really enjoy, also my riding has improved enormously thanks to all the lessons I have had, mainly with an instructor called Tim Brier, you never stop learning, and especially when bringing on a young horse the lessons are essential. I still consider myself to be quite a novice, but I have learnt a lot and am happy to take my knowledge further into a new challenge.
As I said at the start of this entry, a break from horses would be the best thing right now as I have a lot on at the moment with moving house, school holidays and my youngest daughter Zoe starting a secondary school in September. But browsing through some online horse adverts late one night last week, I came across a lady near Sittingbourne, who has three young Friesian horses, and needs help bringing them on. They need some handling, grooming, getting used to being led, all the general things associated with young horses. The 2-year-old is getting ready to be backed, the other two are only yearlings and need to get used to being led, especially the colt. It’s a nice casual arrangement, not as demanding as what I was doing before. I can go when I have time, so I have said I can go over there on Mondays and Fridays as these are usually my days off.
Today was my second visit. I groomed and led the 2-year-old. He didn’t want to walk for me at first, he’s only used to being handled by his owner who has had him from birth, so naturally he wasn’t keen on taking orders from me! It’s hard getting used to new horses, he has a cough at the moment, and I was a bit unsure about how hard to be with him, especially with the owner watching. I’ve always been taught that there is no point trying to pull a horse to make it walk, the horse is stronger and you can’t make it move like that. Unfortunately that appears to be the way this fellow is learning, so no amount of me standing by his shoulder asking him to walk on, giving the odd flick to the quarters with the lead rein was going to work! That is something we are going to have to rectify.
Then was the turn of the colt who is only a one year old. He didn’t really lead at all and it took a lot of coaxing and tugging to get him the short distance through the gate to the field next door. Just in the adjacent field they have a “cage”, I don’t like to use that word but its the best way to describe it. It’s made up of some 8′ high metal barriers, arranged into a circle which is about 10m in diameter, the idea being you can “free rein” the horses in there. This is not a term I’ve come across before, and googling it just now didn’t help either, like I say I am still quite a horse novice in many areas. Basically, once in there you can let the horse trot round the circle, the same as lunging but without having a rein attached . You stand in the middle and get the horse moving by swishing the lead rein behind him. If any horsey people read this I would love to hear your comments. In my opinion, the plus point to this was, it got the colt moving forwards. On the negative side:
- I feel this develops more fear in the horse rather than trust towards the human that is chasing it around.
- You are closed in a metal cage with a 14.2hh one year old Friesian horse. Not too safe for me.
- The horse at times gets too close to the fence, because he’s trying to get away. Not too safe for the horse.
I would like to say at this point that at no time was the colt upset or scared by this training method. After one or two circles I let him stand so I could approach him, as I was concerned he wouldn’t trust me to go near him. It was the first time he had done this and I wasn’t going to let him get upset.
After that I did some normal leading, to take advantage of the fact that he had been moving forward nicely. I was really pleased that I got him walking on from the shoulder rather than being tugged, and I hope to continue this on my next visit and also get the 2-year-old doing it as well.
Getting used to how people do things differently is the problem rather than getting used to different horses. I intend to give it a go for a few visits and see how things develop. I still need to find my feet there, it’s very different from the last place which was so perfect in many ways, it makes it a tough act to follow.
