As mentioned in a previous post, we recently took our two untrained horses out to South Dakota for training. Due to me being pregnant with our fourth child, the training was going to be postponed for another nine months at least, and we really wanted to see these two colts started as soon as possible. So in October they made the trip out to Mission, SD, to spend at least a month with a horse training family.
We have never sent a horse away for training before, but we had good recommendations for Roger and Tiffany, and a lot of faith in their horsemanship abilities. As we unloaded the colts from the horse trailer, I explained their backgrounds and dispositions to the riders. Cletus, the three year old buckskin, would probably be spooky, mistrusting, not know a whole lot about groundwork or have much prior experience being handled. Bluebird, the five year old mare, was more of a slow and accepting nature, not easily spooked, not as athletic, had already been saddled and ridden once or twice, but just needed a lot of miles put on her.
So we left the horses in their care and returned to Iowa. The next day, we got a text message saying, “We saddled that black horse (Bluebird) and she bucked like crazy!” And followed up with another message saying that they were riding her and she was doing well. Then a few days later they texted and said that the buckskin was coming along great and seemed very smart. He also had bucked when first saddled, but that never worries me a whole lot….it’s to be expected the first time or two.
Well, this morning we got a call from Roger, and he gave us a full update on the two young ones. Cletus is coming along great, he said. He said he has ridden him everywhere….through town, all around with the village dogs barking at his heels, to a funeral procession (it’s on the Indian reservation and their funerals often involve horses with and without riders) , and sometimes up to ten miles in a day! He said Cletus is very calm, not spooky at anything, not neck reining yet but getting close to it, and is so smart and quick to learn that Roger loves riding him. He asked what bloodlines the colt has, because he’d like to get a horse with similar breeding. That’s the sort of thing every horse owner loves to hear!
But the news was not so good about Bluebird. He said she has some hang ups. She hates being bridled, and wondered if it was okay to try a hackamore on her (we said “yes!”) because it was so difficult to get a bit in her mouth. He said he isn’t afraid to get on her, but when riding she will unexpectedly stop and back up for no reason and with no way of getting her to stop it. He said they have tried spurs and she just acts numb to them. He said she will back up so fast she is almost trotting backwards. We asked if she showed any tendencies to rear (a behavior that is very often a follow-up to the refusal to move forward) but he said she hasn’t yet, anyway.
My husband just said that one good horse out of two isn’t bad, and we should just sell her. Me being a horse trainer, I want to give her another chance. See if a bosal suits her better, and see if she has tooth problems that make her hate having a bit put in or something. The backing up thing baffles me, but thinking back to her first experiences under saddle, my sister said that before she gave Bluebird to me, she had given her to a man in their church who was going to train her, but all she would do was back up so he decided he didn’t want her. So that is curious, because she has always been treated very well to my knowledge, and I don’t know why she would just develop the tactic of backing up for no reason.
My best plan of action for her when she gets home is to do a lot of groundwork over obstacles, between scary objects, and through places where she might think of refusing or backing up. When she does try to back up, use a lot of pressure to get her to move forward and MAKE her move forward whenever she is asked. I have to believe that backing up is just a “coltish” tendency that will disappear when she is more seasoned and more accustomed to working under saddle. I won’t be able to ride her until summer, so we’ll see how she does with the groundwork in the meantime. I wish she had been lightly started as a two year old, because she could have three years’ worth of saddle time in her history by now, and she is only just now beginning to learn. So I’m not going to write her off just yet.
But that’s how the colt starting is going. I’m so happy someone is willing to go out in the cold weather and put saddles on these colts and ride them for miles! It’s far better than if they were here in Iowa standing around a round bale waiting for summer. I can’t wait—summer can’t get here fast enough!
