Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Showing a Horse (and Learning from it!)

Today, I showed a potential buyer Cowboy, my bff's horse. He's an incredible grey gelding with a ton of athleticism. He's turned out to be more horse than she wants.

Two people came and I showed them some simple things by quietly playing with him online. I wasn't asking for much as I was in my aircast and not willing to get myself in trouble. He stayed calm and quiet, but they could tell I wasn't asking him for much energy. One of them took him and asked for a little more and Cowboy demonstrated that he can be obstinate.

Then, we tacked him up and the woman rode him a bit. He worked the bit a LOT and he tried a few of his other tricks (rubbing her off on the fence post, being hard in the mouth). She finally shared that she wanted to use him as a lesson horse. I was thinking, ok - now you're just wasting our time. She'd never shared that before. Cowboy is no lesson horse.

She trotted him a little and had to acknowledge his amazing trot, but in the end, it's not the horse for her. They left w/o him and I was a little glad. :-)

I learned a little more about Cowboy that day and I also got the chance to talk to them some about the training they do. They are about to embark on a 30 day training clinic with Dennis Reis. I'd love to do that. They had done 30 days with Clinton Anderson the year before. I realized that for me, I want to focus on Parelli. Maybe later I'll use other clinicians to that extent but for now - I'm a Parelli student.

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