I think I should first say that my experience training horses has been a bit trial-by-fire. My first horse I bought when she was 6 months old and I was completely inexperienced. Thank goodness I was boarding her at Summit Stables, where the owner/trainer Greg took me under his wing and taught me how to understand and train horses. After a while I started helping other people at the bar with what I learned, and eventually Greg offered me a job instructing others.
But it's been about five years since I last really did "training" with a horse. Needless to say I'm feeling a little rusty!
I came to the barn when Bonnie was moving the horses from one paddock to another, so we just kept Gobie back in one of the smaller fenced in areas while the rest of the gang went out to the big grassy field. He wasn't too distressed by that, but he was focused on where the others were and not much concerned with me.
"I'm not sure about this whole 'training' thing."
I decided we might as well start with a little round-penning exercise. After all, first thing's first, right? But I quickly realized that the area we were in was much too big to be really effective. He had a lot of room to run, which meant I had a lot of room to run, and since he's much more faster than I am he was able to evade me some of the time.
The whole purpose of round-penning is asserting your leadership over the horse, and that's done by dictating where the horse can and cannot go. When it's done right the horse responds to your body language by going certain places, being blocked from certain places, and finally coming to you when you ask him to. In our case I was able to dictate where Gobie went pretty well, but there were many instances when he could just whiz by me. He would also face into a corner near what I considered an unreliable gate (I was pretty sure he could barge through it) so when I would try to move him out of the corner he tried to kick me a couple times. I couldn't really blame him for that, though--in that corner he didn't have a lot of options for freely getting away. He did have no trouble coming in to me, though, but it wasn't the kind of submissive greeting you're supposed to get. Instead it was more of a, "You're going to give me a treat, right?" kind of meeting. As soon as he saw I didn't have one, it was on to ignoring me which meant I got to chase him off.
We got to a pretty good point, though, where he started "getting" what it was all about. I decided it was good enough, and started to groom him a bit. It's shedding season so he needed a good brush with the shedding blade. He was pretty good about it, and generally stood still. I had to correct him a couple times when he got bargey, but he wasn't put off by it. He was also rather receptive to backing up which is always a plus. After while I could tell he was kind of getting sick of it, though.
In retrospect I realize that I was doing too much, too fast. Although he is a 9 year old horse, physically capable of doing whatever I ask him, he is an untrained 9 year old horse. He's been use to doing whatever he wants, and although he was treated well at the horse rescue, he's not used to having the individualized attention of a person asking him to do things. All the same he did great for the first go of it: he was patient, willing, and smart. And even when he didn't want to do something he didn't put too much of a fuss about it.
I already know what I'm going to do next time, and what I'll do different. My biggest lesson is to go slower, and temper my enthusiasm by letting us end on a positive note instead of trying for just one more thing.
After our training I let him back out with the other horses. Really, this is my favorite part:
Everyone together: Cinder, Gobie, Honey, Bo and Kahlua.
Gobie and his best pal, Honey.
Eating amongst the buttercups.
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