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...