RE: [RC] Tevis Low completions/training for obstacles - Paul Sidio
JIm said, "That's exactly why you
TRAIN your horse on the stuff you expect to encounter before you put him out
there in harm's way at a ride. "
At this years Land Between the Lakes
Ride, the vet check was out of camp. I was about 15 minutes behind the
lead rider and happily enjoying the hold when he took out of camp on his second
loop. About 60 seconds later he came roaring back into camp with a very nervous
horse. " There's a buffalo that won't let me by" He cried. Several of us
went to look and sure enough the trail went alongside this large pasture where
buffalo are kept. There was one place where the trail narrowed (due to
fence on one side and a grown up ditch on the other) to a single track
path just wide enough to get through. Of course at the only point where it
made a difference was Buford, the Bull Buffalo. He was pushing
against the fence and snorting and making this funny bawling/grunting kind
of noise. Plus he was pawing the ground and his tail was swishing all over
the place. We yelled at him, but he just got more agitated. I have a
foolish horse (one who trusts me a lot) and being foolish myself, I offered to
lead my horse past and then the others might follow. ( By now the
second and thrid riders were done with their hold.)
So we went through the ditch and close enought to Buford
to scratch his forehead, My horse kept eyeballing him, but we went nice and slow
so he wouldn't try to run me over. After we got past him, Buford followed us up
the hill, snorting and pawing. The other riders were able to come on
through. The lead guy asked me how many times we had gone past
Buffalo. I replied, "Counting this time.... once.."
I am a big believer in training your horse to trust you
and respond to you. You can never prepare for every possible obstacle, so you
should prepare your horse to listen and pay attention to commands. Then no
matter what you are trying to do, you have the basic work aready done. If
you have built a trust bond with your horse they should follow you over a creek
or off the side of the Grand Canyon if you ask them to. If you don't have
that bond, you can train them to cross a 3 foot wide clear creek on level
ground, and then when you have to cross a 4 foot wide muddy creek with steep
banks you have a wreck. When you have that trust you can do anything with
them. You will be able to conquer Buffalo or even Bison. If you don't have it,
there isn't a crop big enough to whip them to do something they are terrified
of. Paul N.
Sidio
