DAY 1

Today I started training a horse named Brandy, she’s a beautiful bay and her breed is half Quarter and half Percheron, she has a sweet personality about her, but she’s stubborn at the same time. I talked to the owner (Sam) yesterday about her, who said she’s halter broke and has had a saddle on before, but if you even think about trying to put a bridle on her, she freaks out and has a fit, and throws herself on the ground. So yeah I figured this was gonna be a tough one, after talking to Sam some more I walked up to Brandy, and started rubbing her gently with my hands and talking to her. She seemed to like me so I went ahead, after about five minutes and started putting a saddle on her; usually I wait longer than that especially when they are a hyper more wild kind of horse, because they need more time to get used to me, and their environment. But I was training Brandy at Sam’s house because it was right down the road, so she was already used to her environment, which made things go smoother. She moved around a little, but for the most part she was pretty good about letting me get the saddle on her. Then after that I started with the bridle, expecting to have a hard time, but she surprised me, and let me slip it right on. Horses can tell though when somebody knows what they are doing or not, and it usually all boils down to the fact, if the horse feels love coming from the person that’s working with them or not. And they will always react a million times better whenever the trainer has love towards them. After that I led her around the yard for about another five minutes, then slowly got on her back after letting her feel my weight first, she started walking at a fast pace, and every step further realizing I had control. After a few minutes she dead stopped, and decided she wasn’t going any further, I tried getting her to walk by tapping my heels on her side, and gently slapping her rump with the ends of my reins, but she still wouldn’t budge. I got off her back and started leading her, so she knew that I wanted her to go, after a couple minutes I got back on and then she started walking that time, then of course she stopped again, but then I knew what to do, after a few rounds of this she figured out who was the boss, and started behaving better. After a couple hours I took her tack off, let her know how good she did, and brought my saddle and put it in car, and then walked back up to the fence, and stood there talking to Sam for a few minutes, Brandy saw me standing there and walked up to me, and rubbed her soft nose on my face, I patted her neck, and told her I’d be back tomorrow.