Last week I spent three days learning more about horses and how to break them to ride.
I have helped friends break horses since I was quite little and I have broke quite a few myself over the years but these three days I learned some new good tools of how to do it and how to stay safe!
I had a guy named Dennis Brazeal, who is a cowboy kind of guy, come and work with me.( I will post pics as soon as I have some). He normally works with problemhorses in the Albuquerque area. And these days he breaks a lot of warmbloods for dressage riders down there. We had sent a 3 year old gelding to him that was very prone to buck. Came home a solid little riding horse.
We spent our days working through most of our youngstock. It was a way to see different methods but the same principle being used on many horses. The first thing was that they have to respect your space. And then you should be able to move all bodyparts seperately. Head/neck, shoulders, hindquarters and middlepart( don't remember the word right now)
I had encountered a lot of it before but now I got a better picture of what it does and how to use it. It is very hard to try to explain in words when you cant show what you mean on a horse so I will spare you that.
One horse we worked with was Arielle. She is a 3 years old paint mare that I have worked with since day one of her life. She was a handfull as a baby. Lots of hours to get her to where she is today. But she has decided that she can trust me and will do anything I'll ask her as long as it is fair. I have spent some time in the last 2 months to get her prepared for this week. I have ponied her and gotten her used to the saddle and even sat on her for the first time about a week ago. So with the help of Dennis I got her a little more supple in her sides, a little better at responding lateral and vertical. And then I got on and rode her. She did AWESOME! A little reactive which is expected of a hot little mare when you start out but nothing I couldn't bend her out of.
One of the things that I got confirmed in my own training and even encouraged to do more was the fact of getting on and off on both sides of my horses. Who said that we only should get on on their left side? Growing up I never saw anybody get on their horses on the right side. I started doing it because I didn't want my saddle to slide left. But turns out that it is good for horses to have everything done the same amount on both sides so they use more of their brain.
It was a very interesting couple of days and I am excited to go back to work tomorrow and get to perfect some of these skills.
Stay safe out there!
D
No comments:
Post a Comment