My baby is finally getting trained!

[Deleted]

I can't believe the day has finally arrived - Ona actually started her training 6 days ago.  She's doing great at longeing with a saddle on, the trainer says she's a quick learner.  She got a bit in her mouth today for the first time and next week she's starting ground driving.  In about 2 weeks the trainer will get on her for the first time!

I've done a bit of riding over the past 3 years or so, and learned a lot, but still have quite a bit to learn yet.  I'm not very good at dealing with naughtiness but the horses I was riding were poorly trained and I wasn't getting much guidance so I didn't feel very confident.  .  I'm looking forward to getting some lessons from this lady, but I don't know if we'll get started on trails at all before we move down to the MOzarks.  It depends on how quick our house sells, and how much time the trainer has.  I don't think she'll have the time to do much trail riding with me.  

I wonder if, when I get down there, I'll be able to find someone to give us trail lessons and how I would find such a person.  We're hoping to move somewhere near Ava, where the Missouri Foxtrotting Horse Breed Association is.  I looked them up and see they do 50 organized trail rides per year.  I wouldn't want to go on trail rides with them until I felt confident.  Ona is a quarter horse but their web site says all breeds are welcome.

[aoconnor]

You could contact the association and ask them for trainer referrals, they probably have a list of trainers in the are. You can also call an equine vet clinic in the area you are moving in to, they might have some good names for you.

It sounds like your trainer is taking her time with Ona, that is good. I hate when a trainer tosses a horse in the round pen, gives it a couple of days, and then gets on them and rides them out. There isn't enough time for the horse to get settled with being worked, and it can really mess them up if the trainer goes too fast. Hopefully you will get some saddle time.

[Deleted]

Thanks, Amy - I'll do that. I was looking online for lists of trainers but you can't tell from online ads whether somebody's any good or not. I found this lady by going to horse shows - she was teaching the clinics. The association should have a list of good farriers too, I imagine? I have been using my trainer's farrier for about 6 months now and she says after the trim she gets tomorrow, Ona's feet will finally be in good shape and balanced for the first time.

I love this trainer. She is calm and quiet and firm. She does not put up with anything but she never shouts or waves her arms around or overreacts - she's just so competent and confident. Ona is getting much calmer and quieter and less spooky. The trainer has a big young gelding she's showing and she says he's "quite a handful" and has to be corrected often, so I'm just going to go watch her with him today to see how a good trainer corrects horses. I didn't get to watch her with Ona this week because of my eye injury, and she's got so quiet already and is learning so fast that I don't know if I'll be able to see her getting corrected a lot.

Ona's young, and I'm not that experienced, but I think I will feel more comfortable on her than I've felt on any horse I've ridden so far because I know her and I know she's getting good training. I want to ride with a trainer on the trails for a while. The last thing I would want to do would be to cause inconvenience for others trying to enjoy their ride and I think that if I have a trainer with me I can learn what I need to learn without causing them any problems.

[Deleted]

Holy cow - I just feel so stupid for everything I ever thought or believed about horses in the past. Seriously - I wish I could go back and remove all of my stupidity from the internet so nobody can ever see it again.

Watching this trainer, I feel like there is so much to know about horses that it would be impossible for me to learn it all. I was watching her train this big young gelding - getting his headset right, and the different gaits, and teaching not to break his gait while going over obstacles etc. etc. I couldn't even see what she was doing to tell him what he needed to do......was she using her spurs? Moving in her seat? Applying some sort of leg pressure that I couldn't see?? It was all so far above my head. But one thing I did notice is that she never got the least bit emotional or swung her arms around or acted dramatic in any way. At one point when she was trying to get him to do something (I have no idea what) he started lifting his head and throwing it around and not cooperating. She did not yell or hit or punish, she just got off of him and got a training bit and said "he's young and he doesn't understand, it's not his fault so you can't get mad but it's not just about getting him to do what he's supposed to do, it's getting him to do it with the proper headset" so she put the training bit on and got him to do what he was supposed to do. When he did it right once, the lesson was over.

She worked Ona next (this was her 5th or 6th day of getting trained I think?) and she said Ona misbehaved more for her yesterday than she ever has, even on the first day she put the saddle on. I was thinking "this is bad???" I'd seen worse behavior on "broke" horses lunging at the other barn. She was humping her back like she was going to buck and she started crow hopping etc. and the trainer once again never yelled or swung her arms or got even slightly emotional. She just said "no" and made her keep going forward. She's teaching "whoa" and Ona doesn't totally understand "whoa" yet but once again there was no emotion attached to it. Her "no"s and "whoa"s and "good"s are just so quiet and subtle.

She has her lunging on the correct lead and when she gets the lead wrong all she says is "noooo" and Ona changes leads. The trainer is happy because she changes quickly and does "flying lead changes". Until the other day I had no idea what people meant when they talked about leads.

I had no idea horses were so smart - that Ona could understand when the trainer said "no" that she meant she needed to change leads just flabbergasts me. How does she know the trainer isn't saying "no, don't hold your tail that way" or "no" to something else? After it was all over, she hosed her off and Ona just stood there and let her do it.

I brought my saddle that I'd been using in the past, along with the rest of the tack. She said the saddle has semi quarter horse bars and there's no way it could fit Ona or the other two quarter horses I'd been riding. I told her the problems I'd had riding in the past (the saddle coming up in the back during trotting and hitting the horses in the butt) and she said that was because of the way the saddle fit and how heavy it was in the front. I had figured out how to balance in it in such a way that it wouldn't lift up in the back, but I should not have had to do that. She said it probably hurt the horses, too, where it was too tight on the sides of the withers. And she said the bit I was using was "very old school" and that most horses won't behave using that bit. So no wonder the horses I was riding didn't seem happy. The tack problems - plus the way they were trained or not trained. They weren't bad horses I tried my best to find people who knew what they were doing and asked everybody to check saddle fit and they all said it fit fine. I paid lots of money for lessons etc. and none of them could tell me why it was rising up in the back like that. They just said the horses had "very bumpy trots". Now I feel bad for ever riding those horses at all, not knowing what I was doing - and I wish I had all that $ I spent on those lessons back.

So anyway - I guess I'm not any the worse for the past few years spent "learning" from people who didn't really know what they were talking about - but I have to start over, and not believe that I know anything because so much of what I "know" is wrong. Good thing I did try to communicate on the other forum, even though I had no clue what I was talking about, because all of the "uh-ohs" and warnings I got there clued me in that something was definitely not right about the way I was being taught. If it wasn't for saying stupid things and embarrassing myself on that forum I never would have known that I needed to take Ona out of that barn and find a different trainer. I'm still really, really embarrassed about everything I said there. Mortified, really.

On the brighter side - she said Ona is actually a very nice horse. She said she has very good blood lines and all the working horse in her comes through and she's very quick and agile and a fast learner. On her dad's side she has lot of reining, sorting etc. blood lines and her mother's side is all racing bloodlines. The trainer said the best horse she ever had was a "mutt" like that and she could do everything well. She said she did Western Pleasure and English and team penning and reining and everything with that horse and won more with her than she ever won in her life, even though she wasn't fancy enough to go to big shows or anything. So that's neat to know - although I may never understand enough about horses to do any of that with Ona.

Oh - it's funny, too, looking at Ona after looking at the other horse. Ona looks like an absolute midget. He's so huge - about 16'1 or 16'2 and still growing and he has this great big huge head and neck. He's just massive. Then Ona comes out, all tiny LOL. I thought she was big before - I think she's about 15'1 at the butt now. She's butt high and she's in a growth spurt. The trainer said she wasn't getting good nutrition before and it might take a while for her to catch up but not to worry, she will catch up.

[Otter]

I am SO happy for you and Ona! I remember when you first got her.

Darlin, don't be embarrassed about anything! We are all new at one point. The important thing about you is that you are eager to keep learning. That alone would make me proud to have you as my student. there are plenty of folks in your position who would have decided they know all they needed to know a year ago and firmly flipped the Off switch on their brains, lol.

I am so, SO glad that you found a good trainer. When you have a good one, it never looks like they're really doing anything but just fooling around with the horse a bit, and the horse just keeps getting better and better. It's all about little tiny improvements, timing, and knowing when to stop. Horses are incredibly sensitive creatures. Sounds like this trainer can teach you about that, which is wonderful.

Here is an easy trick to saddle fit. You need another person to help you. Put the saddle on the horse with no saddle pad and very lightly cinched. Slide your hand under the saddle and have your helper lead the horse forward. If your hand gets pinched, so is the horse, and the saddle doesn't fit. Slide your hand to a couple of different spots under the saddle. Now you know more about saddle fitting than 90% of the other people you'll ever meet.

[Deleted]

May 8, 2015 8:18:57 GMT Otter said:

I am SO happy for you and Ona! I remember when you first got her.

Darlin, don't be embarrassed about anything! We are all new at one point. The important thing about you is that you are eager to keep learning. That alone would make me proud to have you as my student. there are plenty of folks in your position who would have decided they know all they needed to know a year ago and firmly flipped the Off switch on their brains, lol.

I am so, SO glad that you found a good trainer. When you have a good one, it never looks like they're really doing anything but just fooling around with the horse a bit, and the horse just keeps getting better and better. It's all about little tiny improvements, timing, and knowing when to stop. Horses are incredibly sensitive creatures. Sounds like this trainer can teach you about that, which is wonderful.

Here is an easy trick to saddle fit. You need another person to help you. Put the saddle on the horse with no saddle pad and very lightly cinched. Slide your hand under the saddle and have your helper lead the horse forward. If your hand gets pinched, so is the horse, and the saddle doesn't fit. Slide your hand to a couple of different spots under the saddle. Now you know more about saddle fitting than 90% of the other people you'll ever meet.

Thank you, Otter!  I did learn all the ways horse traders trick people, and why you should never ever ever buy a horse without a vet check, and that if horses are surrounded by tense loud people all the time they don't behave very well, and that if you're intense your horse will be intense and......on and on and on.  So starting off by watching the wrong ways to do everything showed me a lot.  What I have had a really time understanding is - how could a person spend decades with horses, making horses their livelihood, and not figure these things out?  I asked the trainer about it.  She teaches a lot of clinics and stuff up here so she sees it all the time.  She said it's basically just cultural - when everybody around you is doing things a certain way, and that's the way it's always been done, you just don't question it.  That's how people are with horses up here.  She was basically saying that the person I got Ona from, where I boarded and got my "lessons", was no worse than 90% of the horse people in our area.

Ona is a little jumpy and the trainer thinks it's probably because it's going to take her some time to learn that she doesn't need to be.  She thinks she'll be fine, though, and says she's a great horse.

Thanks for the saddle fit tip!  Now I'm a saddle fitting genius LOL.  I have two saddles here that I think might work and I'll bring them over there and check them out.  She still has some growing to do so if one is a little too big maybe I'll hang onto it for a while.