So Fall is Now Upon Us

Well, now it's fall and we did take a few little rides, but nothing spectacular and then winter hit and it was a cold one, so there was no riding throughout the winter. As soon as spring peeked it's nose out I was ready to ride!  With the two of them it was just too hard, so I basically just would ride, sometimes bareback from lot to lot as I grazed them.

One spring day in April, my feet hurt and I just didn't want to have to walk a crossed the road to move them so I talked Gracie into letting me jump on her back and bareback her to the gate.  Well, when we got there I had to jump off to open the gate.  I was hanging onto her mane, as I didn't have a halter on her, and when I slid down my hand got tangled in her mane and one finger didn't let go!  Yep, broke the hell outta it!  It'll never be the same, or work right.

Summer came and went, and it was either too hot or too wet to ride, but fall weather was beautiful so I decided I was going to definitely get some riding in before the snow started flying. I bought me a little leather bareback saddle, thinking that if I didn't have to go to all the trouble of saddling them up that maybe I'd be more inclined to ride more often.  I was going to just throw this on them, ride around the pasture a bit every day and get this down to a tee.  I went to the barn and saddled them both up and started working.  Two hours later I still hadn't managed to talk one of them into letting me get in the saddle.  The more I worked the more determined they were to keep me off their backs.  I gave up for the day, I went home and just wanted to cry.  The next day I talked my husband into going for a ride with me.  I just felt safer if someone was with me.  We saddled them up, and went about 5 blocks, Gracie fighting me every step.  I tried to get her away from Dixie just long enough to run around some trees and practice some reining, and she pulled against me until I was about to fall out of my saddle.  I told Vern, "let just go back to the barn, I just don't feel at all safe".    I finally came to the conclusion that I needed some help and if I didn't get it pretty quick, I'm going to get hurt.  I mean really hurt.  I put the horses away and went home and sent an email to Julia.

I found Julia Slater online advertised as a John Lyons certified trainer the year before.  In all my "studying" I decided I liked the way John Lyons worked with horses and did a little research to see if I could find a trainer in my area.  Julia is in southern Kansas, but that was about as close as I could get.  I had called Julia back then to see what it would cost to get her to come and do a clinic, but I wasn't able to get enough interest lined up for it.  While talking to her she told me about her online training and suggested I try that.  I balked at that suggestion because what I really felt I needed was some hands on training.  Now  I'm desperate so I'm willing to try just about anything. Together we decided we would try the online training and see how it goes.

I did my best to explain to Julia where I was with the horses, which was no where.  Gracie had eluded me in putting a halter on so many times that I had started letting her go without a halter and now she was impossible to catch.  Even with a handful of treats she would stay just far enough away that I couldn't catch her. If I did get a halter on her she would run over me.

Dixie would try to kick me for what seemed to me no apparent reason.  If I tried to get on her from the ground she would back up and not let me on.  If I tried from the mount she would refuse to bring her hind end to me so that I could reach her.  If I scolded her she would try to kick or bite me .  I was to the point of "FEAR" in getting to close to her. When I walked behind her I took a wide path!

Julia and I agreed that we needed to start from scratch.  The first thing to do was to try to get the halters on them.  No grain or treats unless they put their halters on first.  So here we go! Getting a halter on Dixie was no big deal.  She would back away from me but sometimes if I told her "whoa" she would stop.  Other times she would go out of the barn a ways and stop, and I could then walk up to her and put a halter on her with no trouble.  Getting Gracie was another story.  I learned that if I got Dixie first and walked her to the gate, Gracie would follow, and usually then would let me put a halter on her.  She would NEVER let me do it in or close to the barn. The first week that's what we did.  I would walk Dixie to the gate put the halter on Gracie, lead them both back to the barn and give them their grain.  HAHHA! That worked for awhile until Gracie figured out that if we went to the gate I was going to catch her, so now she would go to the gate with me and then turn around and run so the chase was on!  Now understand it's the first of January and it's dang cold out there and I'm really not wanting to spend an hour chasing this horse around in the snow.  But Julia said....no halter no grain.  I gotta tell ya there were some days that she just didn't get any grain.  Yet I made an effort everyday to give her the choice.  Soon enough I learned that if I could get her into the upper pasture, and work with Dixie for awhile, by the time I got done, she was ready to put her halter on.  That's what we did for the next two or so weeks.  Then I tried treats.  That was a joke at first.  I tried putting the bucket of grain down and when she got close enough would put the halter on her.  Worked once!  The next  three or four times I tried it she danced around me like an Indian going to a pow wow.  I was to the point of total frustration.  When I would finally catch her I was so mad I wanted to beat her!  However, I knew if I ever did that that she would never come to me.  I mean if someone caught me and then beat me I sure wouldn't be in any state of mind to let it happen again!.

Julia suggested that I make a place I could run her in and shut the gate, a place to catch her.  I didn't have what I needed to do that and with 10 inches of snow and ice on the ground, wasn't in the position that I could get anything rigged up. I did have some fairly long rope, so I thought maybe I could get her in the barn and run a rope a crossed the entrance to keep her in.  I was pretty proud of myself, hey that was easy enough.  So I get a hold of the halter and head for her and she turns around and starts for the entrance, stops and looks at the rope and then me like, "hey what's this?", drops her head and underneath the rope she goes, gives a little skip and kick and takes off across the lot mimicking  "Ha ha, you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!"

  I'm telling you you have to be smarter than the horse if you are going to win at this!