Professional help

Okay, I know it's been ages since my last post. I felt Calico and I were making great progress. On September 1st I was riding her in the arena; and we were going through all our usual exercises. Another rider was in there with us but we were staying apart. As soon as we tried to ride together Calico spooked then bucked hard and I came off. I got right back on and we rode some more, but my hip and sacrum really hurt, and my confidence was shaken.

Although I think we've made great progress this year, I know there are gaps in my training. Training has to come before conditioning. I quickly made a decision to get some help from a professional trainer.

One of my problems was finding the right trainer. I've studied Parelli, Clinton Anderson, Chris Erwin, John Lyons, Michael Schaffer, Linda Tellington-Jones, Sally Swift, Kitty Lauman, and Dr. Deb. While their end goals are the same; a balanced, supple, responsive horse that enjoys his work, their approach or techniques are very different. The tools are different, the jargon is different. They all have their method that they are marketing and the novice has to cut through all the hype to get to the heart of training. Reading about a technique and implementing it are worlds apart. I watched countless videos, read dozens of blogs & articles, discussed this for hours with my friends and spent hundreds of dollars in the process. I know where I want to be, but when I walk into the round pen with my horse, all this information is rolling around in my head, and applying it in the moment takes trial and error. It also takes time and patience. I only had an arena to work in most of this year, no access to a round pen until September. So I felt very good that I had been able to ride my horse through the neighborhood and out in the desert with minimal problems. After falling for the third time, though, I was ready to make real progress, and have a very solid foundation before I conditioning for distance rides. In the meantime, I've become very interested in Cowboy Mounted Shooting, but that will have to wait for another post. What matters most, right now, is to have a safe and willing horse, so here we go.