Trials And Tribulations

I have been speaking this week to a friend who owns a horse that I backed when she was 3 years old. She's having a few problems at the moment and was very worried about their future together.

The mare is a 15.2hh Irish Draught cross who has a feisty temperament but a heart of gold. She is very safe out on a ride and never has any issues there. The problems at the moment are when they get into the sand school to train.

They are working towards novice dressage level at the moment as that is what her owner wants to compete in next. However, the mare seems to have other ideas! She is finding work on the left reign rather difficult, and therefore is basically refusing to work and every schooling session is turning into a battle. It all came to a head when trying to perform a canter transition, the mare bucked and my friend became unseated and fell off into the fence. She hurt herself quite badly and her confidence was shaken.

I think we've all been there at different stages with our horses where 'the straw that broke the camel's back' moment occurs and all you are thinking is 'why on earth am I even bothering?'.

I had a tough time once with a gelding that I owned. He was a Dales pony who loved his food and hated any form of exercise. However, I saw the potential in him and just wanted to bring it out. He had other ideas. It took 3 long years of weight loss and groundwork training, many falls, thankfully no serious injuries, and a lot of tears and stress to get there, but finally it 'clicked'. When I first got him it was a trial to even get 3 strides of canter out of him in the school, but by the end we were performing flying changes and his half pass was wonderful to watch!

Don't get me wrong, he was no grand prix dressage horse, but he qualified for the regional championships for dressage twice, coming fifth out of 57 horses in his most successful outing. I also took him back to our first ever show. The first time we went, he refused to canter and tried to throw me off during our individual show. Needless to say we were bottom of the line! But 3 years later we went back, won our class and became overall reserve champion for the Mountain and Moorland section.

It was such an amazing feeling.

So, my advice to my friend, and to any one else who is at that stressful point in their horse-human relationship, is DON'T GIVE UP! Make sure you have a good instructor/educated friend to help with ground-level advice when you are schooling to give another opinion and to make sure you are safe, then just keep at it. You will find that the battles become less frequent as long as you don't let the horse win, and if possible, try different techniques to avoid that battle altogether. Depending on what you are training for your instructor should be able to help you with this. Then one day, even with the most head-strong of horses, things will just click, and you will feel such an overwhelming sense of achievement. Not only this, but getting through those tough times will bring you and your equine friend so much closer together.

If you have any trials and tribulations that you wish to share, please feel free to do so! Or if you are needing some advice, please post a question so that I and other readers can offer our suggestions!

Thanks for reading!