Working with horses has taught me how to listen and communicate with animals in a very quiet, positive way. My trainer growing up used 'traditional methods' of 'breaking' horses, but I always felt that there was another way. Even though my trainer's horses were extremely good safe horses, I knew that there were other methods that were less harsh. I read everything I could about horses and found Monty Robert's natural horsemanship style of training. It involves the round pen and intuition of horse body language. Later on I discovered clicker training and positive reinforcement techniques through dog training that could be modified for horse training. Now my training style includes natural horsemanship principles of Roberts and Parelli, as well as clicker training.
About three months ago, one of my dog training clients told me that she has horses and of course I had to ask if I could go riding with her. I had been dying to go riding because I grew up training horses and my life just isn't the same without horses in it. Not only did my client say that I could go ride with her, she said that I could have one of her horses! I couldn't even believe it at first! Then she informed me that her horse Bugsy, aka Naughty All Night, was psycho and had recently bucked off another trainer five times. She had also panicked on the trail and busted open her foreleg and had also thrown herself into the wall of a round pen. Everyone on the ranch thought that she was crazy. When I told my client that I would take her, everyone on the ranch thought that I was crazy too. Well, two crazies make a right and Bugsy and I are doing so well together!
I introduced her to clicker training and lots of round pen work, and it's given her a way to communicate with me. She has learned to target a ball on a stick, which was the first step to our clicker training. Now she can target anything that spooks her and once she touches something with her nose and it doesn't bite her back she gets over it much faster. She was also pretty head shy and now she has learned to place her head in my hand. Clicker training has also made her so much better with her feet and now she is picking her feet up easily for the farrier. Before she was kicking the farrier and he had to dope her to get near her. After a couple of weeks with lots of positive reinforcement ground work, I climbed up on her and we've been riding together ever since. She only needed someone to gently explain to her what was asked of her. She's such a sweet and willing horse that she would get extremely agitated and scared when a human would get frustrated with her and push her limits. Slow and steady wins the race and we are slowly pulling ahead. We are working together and communicating with each other in a way that I didn't even know was possible. It's so exciting to see Bugsy become such a wonderful horse and friend! She makes me laugh everyday because she's such a goofy girl and I can never have a bad day when I'm around her. However, she probably will be 'Naughty All Night' the rest of her life because I think she's night blind, which is a common trait in Appaloosas. Oh well, she was free! : )
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