Basic Training - The Horse

Have you ever read a novel where the hero snags a horse out of a field & gallops off into the night with it? The horse always seems to perform well, too. It must have been by the blessing of the gods, because I've never found that to be true.

Horses need training to carry a rider. When I carry around a backpack sprayer full of herbicide (about 1/5th of my weight) I can sure feel it. My whole center of balance is off. If I do it for any length of time, my feet & legs start to hurt, my shoulders get stiff & I get tired a lot faster than if I was just walking around without it. Horses are no different than people, they notice the extra weight, too.

Chad was full grown when I got him, a stocky pony of about 800 pounds. I weigh about 175 pounds, a little over 1/5th his weight & sit up just behind his front shoulders. That's a huge change to his balance & to the muscles he needs to maintain it. I'd seen him canter around the field on his own. He did it just fine, but the first time we tried it with me on his back, his front & hind ends wound up doing different paces -- half canter-half trot, a trope or something. It was awful! We slowed to a walk & then tried again. He figured it out fairly quickly, but it took months for him to build up the muscle & the knowledge to get it every time.

A horse is an intelligent being. They're always checking out their surroundings & the rider often trusts them to make decisions, but they start out ignorant & as self centered as any of us. On a narrow trail, I want him to stay far enough away from trees that he doesn't scrape my leg or the saddle. That takes a lot of practice & we've had a couple of arguments about his thoughtlessness, especially when he cracked my knee against a rock. Just cussing him doesn't help after the fact. I have to first train him to leg yield, move sideways to specific pressure from my leg. Only then can I expect him to understand the concept & get him into the habit of thinking about my comfort.

A horse & rider have a symbiotic relationship that's not too different from that of a man & his dog, although a horse is a prey animal, a very important difference to remember. If given a choice, most horses tend to flight rather than fight, so there is a matter of trust or understanding between them & the person. Chad & I have worked together a lot & he trusts me even more than Mary, the person who usually feeds him. He'll walk right on the trailer for me, but won't for Mary, for instance. Oh, she can get him on, but it's a bit of a battle. (It's definitely not a matter of authority. We all know who's in charge of the place & it isn't me. I'm just hired help.)

So, experience with a lot of different situations is very important. Chad spent his first year on one farm then went to another where he was turned out in the field for 5 years, never ridden or even messed with much. In the past 5 months, he's been tacked up & ridden. Some of the experiences almost blew his mind, like when he was hosed off for the first time. That was quite a traumatic experience -- a snake-like thing that spit warm water on him. Amazingly, it didn't hurt, actually felt good, but it scared him half to death when he first saw the hose.

Since then, he's been taken to a variety of different places, seen different countryside & horses. He's been to an indoor arena, a very spooky place with odd lighting & sounds. He saw kids for the first time & didn't know what to make of the fast moving, brightly colored, loud little humans. (I think he finally classified them as weird dogs, something to be wary of, but probably not harmful.) And we keep slowly throwing new things at him.

In all of these situations, I've been with him. I talk to him a lot in a soothing voice. I let him check out what I can & help him avoid issues. Occasionally I'll smack him on the side to focus his attention on me & keep his mind from haring off into a plain goofiness. After facing so many unique situations, he's come to trust my judgment to some extent. It might be new, it's definitely weird, but I've never let him get hurt -- yet. I don't know that he'll ever come to trust me fully, but he is a little quicker to settle into a new situation each time.