May 2nd...
Upon arrival at home from Bark River, Encore immediately went from the trailer to his first tying lesson. This session went exactly as I had suspected it would at first. After a short time he settled down and just stood. Funny how not being able to move a 12 inch diameter balsam tree changes an attitude. Next came time for him to be wormed. All horses coming to our facility get wormed upon arrival. He was not in favor of being wormed. Once again after fighting with the balsam tree and discovering he couldn’t win, he took the wormer.
Now it was time for a break. He was moved to the round pen, for ease of catching later on, and to let Encore settle in to his new surroundings, have some grain, water, and hay.
Encore has a space problem, and a respect problem. So in the afternoon after I completed a different task, I decided it was time for lesson #2. The objective on my part is to get him out away from my body and realize that where I am that is my space, and where he is, is his space.
After a few gentle, but firm reminders he learned to stay out of my space, and stay in his. He learned to follow, stop, back up, while being only in his space and repeating anything that I did. At this point, he gives me the impression that he is very intelligent.
Even though the training session is going to continue, I decided to give him a short break.
I went and got my saddle, saddle pad, and a 5 gallon bucket. Bucket, for me to sit on in the center of the round pen. Saddle, and saddle pad, for him to check out, sniff, avoid, what ever he wanted.
After a short break, I tucked the lead rope into my belt. I picked up the blanket and introduced it to him and slipped it on his back.
Next came the saddle. Not so well this time. Ran out from under it several times before I succeeded in placing it on his back and cinching it. Now we went back to our early space issue session. All went well, that is until I decided to sit down on my bucket and let him feel out the saddle on his own. Not to my surprise, he started to buck. But that ended rather quickly when the saddle didn’t leave.
He returned to me at the bucket and I decided to call it quits for the first day.
I feel we accomplished a lot on day 1.
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