On Saturday we drove down to visit Eugene. My husband had a lessons with the trainer on ground work. Her style seems to be a bit of natural horsemanship, but also a lot of practical stuff. Which is good since I’m not a huge fan of NH. My husband, while a good rider, didn’t grow up around horses and he has been spoiled by having a very well-trained and forgiving horse in Shasta. So he’s not terribly aware of body language with horses. The lessons started off with one of her more trained horses and then moved to Eugene.
(Apologies in advance as a lot of the pictures are pretty blurry because I only had my cell phone and I was sitting far away to stay in the shade.)
They started by getting Eugene to “join up” and follow my husband around.
Then it was time for haltering:
Then they moved on to sort of lunging. I forget what the trainer calls this, but the objective is for the horse to move out when directed by the arm and to spin it’s hind quarters away if the handler leans in and stares at the hind quarters.
I’m not going to really get into my opinions on this, but Eugene was being a good pony.
They moved on to doing grooming and hoof picking. Eugene was a little tense, but handled it well.
During the grooming, Eugene was quite interested in what my husband was doing. He even seemed like he might want to groom my husband back, but he didn’t.
After grooming, they left the arena to do some hand grazing. Eugene was very interested in the carrots, but really wanted to get them from as far away as possible.
In seeing him again, I’m more impressed with his conformation than I was when I originally got him. He certainly not a fancy purebred, but he’s nicely uphill and he has a good shoulder angle. I also like his heavy, thick leg bones, which should hold up well to endurance. His hind end is a little too upright to me and his back is longer than I’d like, but overall, he’s pretty good.
Because of Eugene’s initial bought of unsoundness and then waiting on the farrier and then waiting on the chiro and then a lot of rain, the trainer ended up not doing much with him last month. Even though most of that wasn’t her fault, she actually refunded us the cost of his training and just charged us for board for that month. While I appreciate her honesty and not trying to just take our money, I also want her to train the damn horse. Given that we dropped off an – admittedly green – but ridable horse, I would like to get a more rideable horse back in two months. He’s got another month of training coming so we’ll see how that goes.
Thank you- I was wondering how he was doing. I was looking at the last photo and was thinking all the things you wrote about his conformation. i think he will make a good, solid horse for you guys. He seems to have a good mind.
yeah, he is put together quite nice for a mustang. sometimes they can be so wonky looking. hopefully the trainer will be able to do more with him next month!
he is certainly a handsome guy! has the trainer been riding him at all?
Oh man, I see people doing this sort of thing at my barn a lot- the staring at the hindquarters and unusual lunging stuff. I'm not a huge NH fan, either, so I usually just politely nod and try to stay out of the way. Each to their own, I guess!
Eugene really is a good looking horse; can't wait to hear more about how he progresses!
Is the trainer not riding him?
I think he wants to be a good boy.
no 🙁
Not yet. I'm not happy about this.
Yeah. I'm not into NH, but if done in a sane fashion, most NH is just operant conditioning – apply pressure until horse does desired behavior and then remove pressure. So it's not something I'd do, but if the trainer wants to do it I don't mind. It's good exposure to humans and obeying humans so I really don't care. What I care about is the horse getting ridden.
I hope so too.
He's a nice looking, sturdy horse – lots of potential there. 😀
Doesn't everyone who handles enough horses end up getting them to yield their hindquarters at some point? Moving around to open/close a gate for instance. It's a convenient skill to have. (and kind of a preparation on the ground for turn on the forehand) Some NH people attach a submission element to it I think…
When learning to lunge, I learned to direct my energy to the hindquarters to ask the horse to come towards me when I want to change directions or finish up the lungeing. It has been useful in riding or anytime I want a horse of mule to move their hindquarters out of the way when I'm on the ground. Often times, I just point and cluck when on the ground though.
It will be exciting to see what the next month of training brings him!
I'm not opposed to the skill. I think he absolutely must know how to yield hindquarters. However, the stare and squat method is what's annoying to me. What if he has a cut on his back leg and I want to squat down and stare at it? I'd like him to not spin his hind end away just because of that.
Yes, Laura had me doing a lot of yielding with Nilla and we still do, but I don't ask her to yield by staring. I recognize that a lot of trainers and horse people do it like this so it's not a criticism. It's just not my style.