TOABH: Making of the Horse

The Owls Approve Blog Hop: Making of the Horse

I’ve said before I know very little about my horses’ pasts. Since I’ve had them, they’ve had very little proper training. Shasta came well trained. David has done a lot of lessons with Shasta and she was also ridden a few times by that instructor.

Lessoning

Dijon has buttons. I don’t know who installed them, but he was clearly very well trained in the past. The instructor at our current barn does lessons with some of my leasers and she adores him. He’s sort of a half-crazed school master. As long as you ask correctly, he will do all sorts of maneuvers. The crazed part comes in because he’s very sensitive and will decide that the inexperienced rider asking for bend was really asking for shoulder out or side pass or something more extreme. However, he’s very rewarding to learning riders because if they do ask correctly, he will do the right thing so they can really learn how to ask. Unfortunately, he paces so he’s not going to any shows anytime soon.

Uphill and collected? Check. Pacing? Sigh. Also, this isn’t me so don’t criticize the seat.

Nilla has had the most training of the three while we owned them. She’s still the greenest of the three,  she’s just the one I’ve paid the most for training on. She has been worked with a driving trainer. She got up to pulling a tire before he had to have unrelated surgery and take a break. She’s also been ridden by our barn’s instructor when she’s around (our instructor only visits the barn about half the year).

I am a driving mule?

Ideally, I’d like to send Nilla off to get 30-60 days of training, but it’s very hard to find English trainers in  our area who are willing to work with a mule. I’ve found a bunch of western ones that will, but I’d really like her to be trained English. If anyone knows a hunter/jumper trainer in the bay area who will train a mule, let me know.