Equi-lyn horse training

Last week, it was time to have 2 horses go home again after they finished their training. So good to see how Lily was doing with new riders and I can't wait to hear more about her journey.

Variety in training is very important for the horses' well being and performance, hence I love to take the horses for a ride out or even a little jump

A good 'park' is very important. Not only to get on your horse without him/her moving around but also if you forget something :) Look at Lily being a good girl while I was changing my boots. Note she didn't even move her left front leg beside her right on.

A pretty successful first half of the week. All the youngsters are growing up :)

Meet Lily, having both a bridle and saddle on for the very first time. She thought it was time for a nap

By following this scale, you know you won't ask too much from the horse and it will be easy for it to learn how to respond to your aid

// Terminology Tuesday - The Shaping Scale //

Our shaping scale has evolved over the years as a result of academic scrutiny. When training any new response, it is important to train step-by-step achieving and reinforcing each step before asking for the next - this enables effective learning and increases the likelihood of the horse offering the right response.

To put the scale into context, we can look at training a canter transition. Initially, you would reward a basic attempt of the horse offering canter, and eventually over time and practise you will have trained the response to be reliable in any location. The scale would be used as follows:

1. BASIC ATTEMPT - the horse offers canter (you may have asked for this by asking him to trot faster until he canters)
2. OBEDIENCE - the horse canters from a light aid
3. RHYTHM - multiple strides emerge from one light aid (the horse keeps going).
4. STRAIGHTNESS - multiple strides on your line emerge from one light aid. The horse will also begin the learn the correct lead.
5. CONTACT - multiple strides on your line with consistent head neck and body posture and a subsequent consistent connection emerge from one light aid.
6. PROOF - the canter transition occurs in any environment at any time emerge from a light aid.

(Excerpt from the book 'Academic Horse Training', p. 42)

Yesterday I brought my horses to their new home! This is also the place where I'm able to take horses in for training.

I'm very excited about this new start and can't wait to see what it will bring me🐴

The last horse to introduce to you is Nisga'a.

Nisga'a is my newest addition to my horsey team, a halter broke horse that is going to be a project horse for me. So I will start her under saddle, train her and then sell again.

I only bought her in October 2019, blind over Facebook. Quite a risk but as soon as I saw pictures of her, I was sold and she was stuck in my mind all the time. I drove about 6 hours one way to pick her up and to be honest, I got very nervous in the car. What if the horse isn't sound? Has issues? What if my feeling about this horse was wrong?
But as soon as I saw the horse I knew I made the right decision. I was checking the horse before loading her in the trailer. It all looked good, apart from her front legs. They were swollen and the backside of both pasterns were full of wounds. It turned out the horse is really hard to catch so the previous owner had her hobbled to be able to catch her a little easier, hence the wounds.

Once she got to my place, she was walking around in her paddock with tiny steps and she was clearly really sore. Luckily I knew it wat caused it so I knew it would get better again, and after treating it, it got better after 2 to 3 weeks. She's now happily trotting and cantering in her paddock and actually has a massive stride.

I don't have my horses hobbled to be able to catch them, so to be able to catch her I spent lots of time with her, just being with her and trying to be as close as possible to her up to that point she was still comfortable with. You saw her growing from a scared horse to a horse that slowly got more curious and wanted to be around people. From when she arrived, I left the halter on her to be able to make the catching process a little easier. After a week I was able to come close to her and pet her everywhere as long as I didn't touch her halter, then she would run away. At least I was able to treat her legs that way. But then slowly she started to come around and I was able to touch her head a little bit and slowly wiggle the halter a bit too. I was then able to clip the lead rope on her halter. I just groomed her, took her for walks and just spent time with her without asking too much from her, to let her know it is a good thing to be around people. From that moment she got better every day and I was able to catch her the normal way (at first by putting a halter on top of her other halter to get her used to the catching process). I was able to do this every day for a week long without her running away or being tense, so it was finally time to take her halter off and she could live free 🙂 She now comes up running in trot, whinnies when she sees you and loves attention. I (and other people) can catch her super easily and she is not sketchy anymore.

The next step is starting her with ground work and then it is time to back her :)

Today I will introduce Squirrel to you.

Squirrel came in my life not that long ago (August 2019). Talking about Sammy yesterday, Squirrel is going to be Sammys replacement for that family in case I can keep Sammy. That way they get something out of the deal as well. Squirrel wasn't started yet, so I decided to take her in already to train her and being able to actually give a horse back to the family that can be ridden as well.

Squirrel turns out to be the best horse ever. Like any other horse, I started with ground work. I taught her to go from the pressure on her belly (where the legs will be when under saddle), stop, park, back up etc. I then got on her, put the saddle and bridle on and off we went. She never put one foot wrong, never bolted, reared up, bucked etc. She goes on trail rides and she is good in a group and on her own.

She is a humans horse, which had me a little worried in the beginning since even after only one week being with me she choose being with me over being with the other horses. This makes a horse owner happy of course, seeing that the horse likes it to be around you, but I also like horses to be a horsey horse and hang out with other horses. Until now, as soon as she hears me coming, she whinnies super loud and comes up and follows me wherever I go, but luckily she found a true friend in Sammy (not the best horse to pick though, since I will have to separate them at some point :( ) so they hang out together lots. Check out the cute photos of the two of them together

Let’s start off with introducing my own horses, and Sammy will be the first one to be introduced.

Sammy is this once in a lifetime horse, as we all have or had one. She unfortunately doesn’t completely belong to me yet. She belongs to a family living in BC where I used to work for. In my first week of working with this family, they introduced me to the horses. I could ride the horses at anytime during my time off but they warned me for this one horse. 'She can kick and bite so just be careful around her'. They have a herd of 10/12 horses so there were enough other horses to pick from for me to ride so I didn’t pat that much attention to that horse. But after a while they asked me if I wanted to start riding her as well. She was started the year before but never ridden after that. I of course couldn't say no to that, so off we went to get Sammy out of the meadow to tack her up and ride her. We started in the round pen and from the very first second I got on her I had this feeling that is hard to describe, but I am sure you all know what this feeling is like. She felt so secure (even though she gave us a couple little crow hops) and I fell in love with her instantly. Since that day I wanted to ride her as much as I could and soon enough I took her out on trail rides and soon after that she even came with us on a cattle drive. She was just an absolute legend.
Then the time had come to say goodbye and leave the family to go travelling for a while with my sister, which meant I also had to say goodbye to Sammy...

Exactly one year later I was back in Canada, found a job and on my way to that job I stopped by at this family for a week to see everyone again. They told me no one has been riding Sammy since I left and I was devastated. The job I was heading to was a holiday resort and they have 12 horses themselves. A crazy idea came in my mind to have Sammy over to the resort so I can train her for the family. After being at my new job for about a month I dared to ask if I could bring her over. Until this day I am still so thankful because this was absolutely no problem at all and luckily the owners of Sammy agreed on it as well. It was March 2018 when they brought Sammy over and to date, she is still with me. She bit my boss in her first week being here but her behaviour has changed immensely. She used to be hard to catch in the meadow but now she comes up whinnying once she sees you. She never kicked or bit anyone after that anymore and overall she became way more friendly. She will always be a typical chestnut mare but she is definitely a trustworthy one :) I taught her the barrels and we entered our very first gymkhanas in summer 2019.

At the moment, she is still with me and the owners are contemplating whether I can keep her or not. All I can do is hope for the best 🙂 in the meantime we just keep working on the gymkhana events, since that’s what she likes the best.

Make sure you check out her transformation in the photos below