Happy New Year!

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wasn't going to write a 2012 year in review post or post any goals for 2013.  I think most of you who read this know that Spencer and our new house were the highlights of 2012.  As for 2013, I'm going to let the chips fall where they may. I have some ideas of stuff I would like to do, but I'm just going to focus on building my relationship with Spencer and see where we end up.

I had a nice Christmas holiday with my family this year.  They live about a 7hr drive SW of where I do, so the weather at this time of year always makes the driving dicey.  We dodged two major storms this year, so I feel lucky.  We now have at least 20" of snow, if not more.  This snow all arrived in the past two weeks! Hopefully that is the last of it for a few days at least.

I don't really have much to report other than I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Here are a few pics of Spencer in the snow from the past few days.  Hopefully I'll be motivated to write more in the coming weeks.

Thanks, Boo to winter and some cute pics

I wanted to thank everyone for their great comments on my past few posts. It is really nice to read all of the supportive comments!  I had another great lesson with Amy this weekend, which I'll write about later, if I don't get completely buried in snow!

Our weather forecast is pretty much snow, snow, snow for this week!  :-S  I like snow - it is pretty, but it makes driving to work and travelling for Christmas a bit more of an adventure...  We are forecast to get almost 50cm (19") by the end of the week!!!! I hope the weather people are wrong!

Since I don't feel like writing anything big today, I thought I would post some cute pictures of Spencer from a month ago, when it was still green and slightly warm!

I like seeing him lying down to sleep!

I also like my telephoto lens that allows me to get close without disturbing him

Roxie was curious and thought she would investigate...

Spencer wasn't too pleased with having his nap interrupted by a cat!  He even tried to nip at her, which I missed. ..

Roxie gave him lots of room on her trip back to see what I was doing...

I am having fun getting some pictures of Spencer and the cats. It seems I'll be able to get some nice snow shots if the weather forecast is accurate...

Keeping it real – Part 4

Phew – this story is getting long! I’m trying to keep it brief, while documenting the process for myself to re-read later on if I get stuck.


The trainer – let’s call her Amy – was due back for a second lesson on a Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago. On Saturday afternoon I decided to take Spencer for a short ride. I tacked him up, headed out to the ring and proceeded to walk around a bit. He was cranky and grumpy and quite tense. Of course, this made me a bit tense and annoyed. I tried to let go of the annoyed feeling, but was having a hard time. Old thoughts of “you can’t do this” were creeping in to my mind. After about 20 minutes of a crappy ride, I put Spencer back out in the field and sulked around the house for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning, I went out to catch Spencer to try and clean him up a bit before Amy arrived. Any guesses as to how that went? I couldn’t catch Spencer at all. He was pinning his ears at me and trotting away when I got close. He hadn’t tried that with me in the 2.5 months that I owned him so far. I was very glad that a trainer was on her way to my place!

Amy arrived and she worked with him out in the paddock. She moved him around the paddock to show leadership, the same as you would in the round pen. He finally settled down and responded to her cues and we caught him and brought him in the barn. We then headed out to the round pen and it was my turn to try and work with him. Amy was giving me tips as I worked. After a few minutes, I was feeling more confident and relaxing a bit. Spencer was responding to my body language and would get a bit confused if I mixed up a signal. Amy thought that the “join-up” exercise would go a long way in helping me realize I could do this and that Spencer wasn’t dangerous or out to get me.

She also somehow helped me cut through all of the old “ideas” (for lack of a better word) I had been holding on to about me ruining my horse, or not being good enough to do xyz. I also didn’t have to worry about all of the different training methods different people had been trying to teach me over the years, or methods that I had tried to use with varying levels of success. I don’t really know how to explain this - but it wasn’t anything she said - her way of handling Spencer was just so basic and focused on responding to his body language. There was no anger, no tension and no frustration in her methods.

We worked with him in the round pen and on the longe line for about an hour, stopping every 5 minutes for me to ask more questions. I really felt by the end of the hour that I could work with him safely and actually make some progress! I then tacked him up and rode for about 20 minutes. I had a really good ride and it was 100x better than our ride the day before! I was sad to see Amy go – I wanted her to move in, or for Spencer and me to pack up and move to her place, so we could work with her full time!

I feel like I made incredible progress in the week following my lesson. Monday night I repeated the round pen exercise and was very close to getting him to join-up. I was already more adept at the longeing work and wasn’t getting any attitude from him at all. The following Sunday I tried the round pen again and was actually able to get him to join-up with me. I was pretty happy with that. It was a big step for both of us.

Note: I know a lot of people feel differently about the concept of join-up and whether it works or whether it is completely silly. For me, it was a big deal, because just two weeks before, I was too nervous to go into a small enclosure with Spencer. Now, I felt I could at least work with him safely and be a better leader. I was hoping to start building some respect and this experience was the foundation for that.

This past week, I have been limited in my work with him, since it has snowed a bit and the footing isn’t great. It is also dark by about 4:30 now. (Oh how I would love an indoor arena to magically appear at my place!) I feel that shorter sessions are still good for us – even if it is only 15 minutes or so.

And that catches you up with the past few weeks. I really feel that I am in a good place and have a good foundation to move forward to work with my horse. I think we’ll do really well this spring and summer. I’m so glad that I didn’t give up on myself or him!

Keeping it real, Part 3

I don't mean to drag this story out, but it is too long to post all in one shot.  I only have one more part to go to wrap it up!

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I made an appointment to have this new trainer come out to my place. I was nervous and didn’t really know what to expect. It turns out she was friendly and easy to talk to. I gave her an overview of Spencer’s behaviour and my issues and we got down to work.


We rigged a round-pen (actually a square pen!) in one corner of my riding ring, using some electric rope and plastic fence posts with some ground poles underneath.

(Note: I wasn’t 100% sure that he would stay in this ring – he probably could’ve jumped the fence or crashed through it without much trouble. I do not recommend doing this at home without a trainer or an experienced friend to help you out if things get messy. Fortunately, Spencer was very good in this space.)

She then proceeded to use round pen work to see what Spencer was all about. She felt that some of his behaviour was just plain attitude: he is a bit dominant, as well as being a bit lazy and just didn’t want to be asked to do anything. She got a lot of attitude (bucking and kicking out at her) from him at first, which made me happy, in a strange way. Wanna know why?

Up until this point, I was taking his behaviour really personally. Like he was cow-kicking at me. Or being difficult with me and me only. When in reality, he was a bit frustrated and annoyed in general. Not taking things personally was a huge first step for me. I figured that if that realization was all that I got out of the lesson, then it was worth it.

After some basic round pen work, she did a bit of work getting Spencer to respond to her on the longe line – she called this technique “gypping”, a term that I wasn’t familiar with. It is sort of like longing, but the horse doesn’t trot in endless circles. She would use her body language to send him out on a circle to the right, then would switch and go back to the left. She also used this technique to get him moving his feet around.

She then did about 20 minutes of work ground driving/long lining him. As far as I know, he’d never done that before. He caught on really quickly. By the end of the almost 2 hour session, he was responding much better. He probably really appreciated the clear leadership he was getting from the trainer. I watched intently for the whole session and asked about 10,000 questions. She was really good about giving me straightforward answers. This first session/lesson was mostly about her working with him to get a starting point. I still wasn’t feeling 100% comfortable tackling some of the exercises on my own.

I was pretty happy with the outcome of the first session – it showed me not to take things personally and to let some of the frustration and anger go. That alone was well worth the time. I booked her to come back again in two weeks.

In the meantime, I was back on my own with Spencer. I wanted to try some of her techniques, but was just a little unsure on how to proceed. I was still a little nervous around him and wasn’t sure that I could get the same results as she did. My mind was flooded with all of the new things I was learning. It also seemed funny to have worked around horses for many years, but never had I had all of this information presented to me in this way.

To be continued...

Keeping it real, Part 2

So, part 1 of this little tale found me all nervous, anxious and uncomfortable all at the same time. I was questioning horse ownership and all of that nonsense. I was angry that I wasn’t a better horseperson; angry that I have confidence issues; and just angry at the whole situation in general, worried that I had bought the wrong horse YET again...etc. etc.

Every night for a couple of weeks, I would come home from work, toss Spencer some hay, give him a pat on the head and go back in the house and worry about these issues. I was driving myself crazy, so I decided to write out a list of some options and hope that a solution would present itself.

My thought process went something like this:

How could I give up on this face?

• Give up horses completely – why did we buy this farm, blah blah blah
• See if Spencer’s old owner would buy him back
• Try and sell Spencer
• Send him to a trainer
•  Move him to a boarding barn
• Become magically more confident
• Ignore things for the winter and deal with it in the spring
•  Get some lessons at home, but who/how with darkness, weather etc.

After lots of pondering, I realized that the majority of the issue was me – a lack of confidence, a lack of leadership and probably some handling issues (where I was trying to get him to go forward, but my body was saying stop etc.) I figured that I had a good chance of working things out if I could get a bit of guidance. I thought through all of the horse trainers/coaches that I knew of and just had a hunch that none of them would really be able to help me. They might be able to work with Spencer without any problems, but would they be able to teach me?

I should note that I’ve been really trying to get to the root of my confidence issues this fall, because I’m tired of saying that “I’m not confident about xyz”, or “xyz makes me nervous”. I have been reading three books that I was hoping would give me some insight:

1. Jane Savoie – It’s Not Just about the Ribbons
2. Mark Rashid – Horses Never Lie
3. Monty Roberts – The Man who talks to Horses (a re-read. I initially read this one a long time ago)

The Mark Rashid book really had me thinking about horse behaviour and leadership, while the Monty Roberts book reminded me about kindness and patience. I thought that some sort of natural horsemanship type person would be the best to help me, but I’m not typically a huge follower of that sort of stuff. I find some of it hokey and only angled to sell you more gear and training videos.

All of this thinking and planning and pondering gets tiring after awhile. I tend to worry about a problem for a few days, then try and forget about it for a few days. On a whim a few days later I decided that I would browse through our local horse classified site - which I hadn’t looked at in weeks - to see if I could find a cute companion for Spencer. (Not sure how adding a second horse would help my issues at this point, but it was a welcome distraction!). The first ad I saw was for a natural horsemanship trainer... The ad was brief and it said the person would travel to your farm to help you. I thought it was kind of strange that is what I thought I needed a few days before, but hadn’t known where to look.

I did a bit of research and this young girl seemed like the real deal. She had a legit web site and had been giving clinics for a couple of years. She had references and the thing that really caught my eye was that she was not a student of any one famous horse trainer. She had worked with several, but was developing her own style.

I decided to throw caution to the wind and set up a lesson with her at my place. I figured one lesson couldn’t hurt.

To be continued...