Fall / winter 2007: Training Bucky. . .

I took the task of training Bucky very seriously. In all of my dealings with horses at work, some of the saddest cases to me are young, well bred, beautiful horses with no manners or training. With so many horses in need of homes, you know that these ones will someday be in jeopardy. While their current owner may not care about thier lack of training (or the safety of anyone working on the horse), horses change hands A LOT and an untrained horse quickly will loose value and end up at auction or worse. So I was determined that Bucky would be well trained.

The basics were easy, he had a great foundation from Gina at Spring Hill and was eager to learn. We did daily grooming, picking up hooves and haltering with no problems. He was very quiet to ride bareback with a rope halter and knew to turn his head to pressure and halt (sometimes!). It took some time to get him used to a saddle though and he much preferred the english saddle, so silly as it looked thats what we started him in.

Bucky Sept 2007, his face says it all . . . he's just tolerating this nonsense!

I decided at this point that to give Bucky a good education we needed professional help . . . so I called Heidi Potter from Maple Ridge Stables. She helped us through some natural horsemanship exercises to develop a working relationship from the safety of the ground. Bucky learned to walk, halt, reverse and trot in a circle and on the lead responding to lightest of requests. (Like a deep sigh to prepare for halt). He was a great student and loved the time we spent together, he learned to come to be haltered and lower his head. He would point an ear back and look at me to await his next cue. We also worked on touching him all over, and finding the softest cue required to get the desired response.

That's a happier pony! Bucky coming right over to start the day's lesson.

It was also about this time Bucky started getting really fresh, all his good care and nutrition caught up with him and he discovered, "Hey I'm a 3 year old!". We ended up having to seperate the paddock so that he would stop harrassing Miss Lady Byrd (our 30 yr. old Morab). Although he was intended to be her companion, he was really making her miserable. They had stalls side by side and still touch noses over the fence, but she was fed up with him chasing her through the snow.

Lady Byrd says, "Seriously, kid?!" Shortly after this Bucky got his own paddock.