Longing! and walking the dog er horse

Yesterday was a training day. Shazaam learned just last week how to move off and longe on a line. Once again he was sticky on his off side but by golly we got it! He longes nicely at the walk and trot and changes direction by doing a roll back without coming in near me. As always we are working on the head down cue and it gets better and better every session. He was having a terrible time with me hanging my arms over his neck, withers, back, and croup but I've been hanging out with him while he eats and just brushing and hanging all over him and he is now pretty much fine with it.

HA! I think I finally achieved the golden grail- he is showing me more and more that he can spook in place. Shazaam hates saddles because some dummy decided to try to jump on him after saddling him before I got him. Since then, the experienced help I was getting tried to saddle him again and he spun and knocked her over- I truly believe he knocked her over because he didn't want to mow me down as I was on the other side of him but about 20 feet away. So much for the backstory and to the meat, last month I did something stupid as green horsepeople are destined to do. I unwittingly place my horse between myself and the hot wire of his paddock. He was eating and had about a foot between him and the e-fence and I was haning on him while he was eating. I accidentally touched the wire and felt the current in my toes. Shazaam spooked in place with just a tap of his front hooves and scooted me over about 3 inches and then happily went back to munching his grass hay. He has spooked the same way around me almost entirely since except for once and he still didn't move but 2 feet from his hay (he scared himself, the big goober).

Since he has been coming along so nicely, I decided after our longing lesson yesterday to take him for a walk around the neighborhood. Its pretty rural with dirt roads so I wasn't worried about highway traffic or anything. I walked him by the only house we had to pass on the route we were taking and oh boy, there were at least 20 dogs on the property that were barking like crazy. Shazaam is used to the ranch dogs and my dogs and he ignores them unless I yell at them and then he goes to run them off, like he is my bodyguard/enforcer or something. Anyway, Shazaam starts to lock up in front of this house and his head went up (for 14hh he can make himself very tall when he wants to). Well I knew I had to get his feet moving to start him thinking about me and not the dogs so I gave him a bump with the rope halter to get his attention and circled him around, asked him to disengage his rear a bit and we started forward again. He was fine after that but I realize now that I should have started this before he reacted by getting tall and locking up- live and learn I guess. When we got back on the ranch property he dropped his head real low and nuzzled me like "You said it was ok and it really was! I'm such a goober mom)

Just a journaling thought here: Because my horse is soooo sensitive, I had a tendency to move and do everything carefully around him. Well that never made his spooks better and in fact I think he took that gentleness as tentativeness and felt insecure from it and it subsequently made him spook worse. I got piece of advise from Marv Walker off his despooking the horse video and that was to act normal and do whatever you do around the horse and he will get used to that- he will know that you control every crazy thing that happens in his environment. Never have truer words been spoken. I flap stuff, slam stuff, and just be my genuine clumsy self and since I started that, Shazaam is fine with it- all of it.

Now when I go to saddle him in a couple of weeks I KNOW that I have to erase the fact that he has a history of aversion to them from my mind so I can just get it on like we do it all the time and everything is ok. It's mentality that is key and since I've learned to teach him to flex laterally and soften to the halter, I'll better understand how to move with him until he stops with the saddle on until I can get it cinched up...we'll see how that goes. Can you tell I'm still apprehensive about it :)

First horse a wild horse-what was I thinking?

Shazaam!

I've ridden horses since I was five. Generally school horses. Some were really nice expensive Andalusians and I'm half Spanish and that particular breed of horse has always been to me a horse far above many other horses for their high intelligence and the bar by which I measure all horses I've ever delt with. My last horse experience was a trail ride on a mare with a nasty attitude (the ride was uneventful) when I was about 23 years old.

Fast forward 12 years. I'm married to a wonderful military man and we are stationed in CA- the desert no less! I find that owning horses out here is fairly inexpensive given the fact that there is no pasture to feed them with and after being here a couple of months and turning down a couple of offers for horses that are middle aged and green broke I buy a 3 1/2 year old Strawberry Roan Mustang Gelding named Shazaam for the price of his adoption and his gelding.

Shazaam was captured by the BLM August 15, 2002 out of NV-504 Miller Flat and was adopted out March 3, 2003.









When I got him August 29, 2005 he did not look like a coming 4 year old, he looked like 2 year old. He had had minimal to no work done with him and although he did have a bit of ground work on him he was barely leading on the near side and not at all on the off side. He looks cresty here and the answer to this is that he was gelded at age 3 and he doesn't really know that he's not a stud colt anymore. Well I've never trained a horse before. Honestly, a few good horses taught me how to ride and a few bad ones taught me to ride better. Given that he'd had over two years of just having food tossed to him, any fooling with him I did was better than nothing. So I groomed him alot and started despooking him by tying an American Flag to his pipe corral, tying plastic bags to the bushes around his pen, walking him through tires and over planks of wood.

He was a very spooky horse and is the type that drops and then jumps sideways before he spins to run away. All I could think was "I gotta fix that before I get on and getting on seems like it will be a long ways away from now".

Shazaam is a very interested and intelligent horse, and his curiosity and supple mind, along with his wonderful friendly personality is what would accelerate our progress. Ok so I had to be there to present the lessons.

I got my hands on books and videos and horse boards and lists to learn as much as I could soak up (and still AM- I'm a ways off still on being a good horsewoman).

My learning materials so far:

Clinton Anderson: Downunder horsemanship for western and english riders and longing for respect video
John Lyons: Roundpen reasoning video and perfect horse magazine
Monty Roberts: From my hands to yours book
Marv Walker: Everything the man has on video and his email list.
Alexandra Kurland: The click that teaches in pictures
Bill Dorrance and Leslie Desmond: True horsemanship through feel
Mark Rashid: Horses Never Lie
Sgt. Rick Peliciano: Bombproof your horse

As you can see this is a very broad base for learning and I think every resource is valuable for putting tools in my training tool box. Since I train dogs and rehab shelter dogs I like having many tools to pull from because some methods are excepted better by different individuals and to me a good trainer has many possible answers to a single problem. Perhaps its going back to Dorrance's "feel" and having a few ways of presenting things can help the trainer offer a better feel to the individual.

Roundpenning has been the most difficult thing to get Shazaam to accept. I found out, talking with other mustang owners that mustangs are harder to roundpen because of their heightened flight instinct. Marv Walker has been the only trainer out there who's methods of roundpenning work for me and my horse. Since using Marv's methods in the roundpen Shazaam is more respectful, compliant, and patient. He also trusts me more to take care of all the potential scary things in life instead of having to determine for himself that a thing is scary or not.

Before this, it took me a month of desensitization work to get a winter blanket on Shazaam, so convincing him that I'm a good leader really pays off! Here he is being "Bondered" as Marv calls it in a 120' X 120' foot pet in December of 2005. The pen is too big but it worked fine for me this day.

Now that I'm up to speed journaling over the last 4 1/2 months I'll post our lessons as we have them.