Fix Ups….

Warning: this is a loooong post.

I’ve been working on this blog entry here and there over the last few days. I had it all finished last night and was just putting in the photos when bang….whole computer shut down and I lost the whole lot. It normally auto saves for me so that had never happened before. I nearly cried; so much work and writing. So, I slept on it and here we go again. Maybe it will be more interesting the second time around:).

I had started by saying that I wasn’t going to even bother apologising for being so late as I was pretty disgusted in myself for it being so long, and I am but honestly, it’s not like I don’t enjoy doing the blog. I would say it’s something I consider more of a ‘fun’ thing than actual work and of course work has to come first. Since Karla left I’ve just found that every hour is full and I so rarely get time for anything like this. I’m getting up with Fred in the dark now though so that should give me an extra hour so we’ll see how we go.

Flynn learning his leg yielding.

We normally have around 8 to 9 horses in work all the time so of course we’ve had many come and go since May the last time I updated. As usual we’ve had some lovely ones and some challenging ones. The biggest standout though has been how many horses we’ve had come to us that have been ‘failed’ by other horse breakers. We have had 7 horses booked in over the last two months, 4 that have been labelled dangerous, utterly untrainable and only worthy of being put down by other trainers and the others labelled as too hard.

Can I just say that I am so glad that people seek a second opinion most of the time and especially in these particular cases, as we’ve had some lovely, very misunderstood horses come to us. We’ve only had 4 come so far so we may well find that the other three yet to come have serious issues, yet somehow I doubt it, going what their owners have said to me about what’s happened. Anyway, that’s what I’m going to focus on with this blog as I think it’s very sad.

Morning fog

Before that though I need to update on Spirit. She had a 5 week spell then came back to be finished off here. While she was out, her owner had some Bowen done and kept up with her groundwork but she had a rest from ridden work. It was actually quite funny as when Spirit came back she was so much more confident, almost to the point of being a bit cocky about a few things . Fred got that sorted though, just by re-establishing the respect under saddle (her owner had done a great job with her groundwork) and home she went after another week or so here. Her owner has since been doing really well with her. Spirit was never going to be the easiest, quietest horse but her owner spent lots of time here and was a great pupil. Fred and I were very impressed with her dedication to her horse and her riding. She emails us regularly to let us know how Spirit is going which is great. In fact Spirit attended her first Adult Riders last weekend and Jo said she was a very good girl.

As I said above, so far we have had 4 horses come out of the 7 booked that have all been to other trainers and not been a success. Having watched Fred work with these guys, it makes me wish that there were some qualifications for horse breaking as these horses had mostly been very poorly handled with some huge, integral parts of their training totally missed or put in the too hard basket. Two had been beaten and all had been frightened, rushed and been through some awful stuff. Can I just state the obvious in saying that every horse is an individual. A good trainer will be constantly adjusting his/her training methods and levels of pressure to suit the horse. Any trainer that thinks every horse will fit into his little box needs to be shot and honestly, one of these horses was so badly abused I would have liked to go and put this particular guy in a box myself..…just kidding but what the horse had been through was just awful and talk about traumatised.

Kat with a breaker 'Beau' at Muresk for an outing.

Can I also just say again to everyone out here that’s considering having some training done; GO AND WATCH THE TRAINER WORK. Watch how the horses interact with him/her. The horses will tell you nearly everything you need to know. And, there’s never any need, excuse or justification for physical abuse of an animal. I’m sure there are some fantastic breakers/trainers around the place but do your research always.

Having said all that, we’ve had horses come in the past for re education due to bad training and actually the horses have been very well trained and the problem has been with the work that’s been done once the horse leaves the trainer. In another case, the trainer was at fault for not communicating with the owner properly but again, the training of the horse was at a good level. We’re always very quick to defend a trainer that’s done a good job because frankly, this job isn’t easy.

Don't forget to worm your horses!

Back to the horses now though, we have a new horse here at the moment that came on Tuesday. His owner has very kindly allowed me to have him be my new ‘case study’ horse for the blog. He is yet another one that’s been failed by another trainer. His lovely owner contacted us about starting him last year but as usual we were booked up. He was booked in anyway but she had to cancel as he had a minor issue that meant he couldn’t come. Rather than book him in again with us and have to wait for ages, she decided to go on a friend’s recommendation to another trainer who was also just up the road from her so nice and close.

I won’t go into massive detail about it but basically the horse was there for about 3 months and had 6 weeks ‘training’ plus some time off on (very expensive) agistment for various reasons. According to his owner, there was never a good session. The horse constantly resisted and fought with the trainer and every session ended on a bad note. There were issues with teeth and soreness (not the owners fault) and basically the horse was labelled as a bucker, dangerous, stubborn, volatile and in need of being shot as he was no good. He was “physically reprimanded” on several occasions including in front of his owner and constantly bucked with all his work. The trainer apparently tried to mouth him but couldn’t so attempted to ride him in a head collar and was bucked of several times. His partner was also bucked off when attempting to ride him (yay horse!).

His owner rang me to talk about it and I immediately said, get the horse out of there as quickly as you can!!! My opinion from the information she gave me was that the horse had been let down badly by the training and I told her we would be happy to take him on. She went ahead and let the trainer know not to continue on with him, picked him up then gave him a short spell at our request while waiting for a cancellation spot here. The trainer had already suggested quitting the horse as he was no good yet the day the owner told him she was taking the horse away and to someone else, he offered her two weeks free training as he suddenly felt he could fix the horse after all:).

The horse arrived to us on Tuesday and has been in work here all week. The first day he arrived he seemed a bit nervy but settled in great and was very responsive to the feed rules and everything else we needed to do such as catching and rugging.

Nasty, horrible horse....:) (NOT)

So, to session one which was Wednesday. Fred brought him in to the roundyard and began with some basic groundwork, the 7 games and lunging and so on. The first thing we noticed with this boy was how very focussed and switched on he was. Having been described as highly dangerous and extremely stubborn, I don’t know what we were expecting but what we got was a slightly nervy but very willing horse with a great attitude. Fred noticed that when confused the horse would be the type to panic, but given time to work things out as he was, he couldn’t try hard enough for us.

Fred then tested his mouth and that basically let us know what the problem was. NO mouth at all as in no steering and no brakes, but resistance which told us that something has been attempted. No mouth equals no control, particularly with nervy horses that may react more than average. Fred began the re mouthing process, the horse had a great session and by the end of it was following Fred around like a puppy dog.

Second session and more progress. The horse was 150% better than the day before. We had no hiccups and again a calm, willing, try hard boy and a very nice horse to work with.

Third session and more of the same. Calm, happy, accepting of everything and trying very hard. No resistance, no disrespect or any problems at all. More re mouthing plus some running reins to ensure the horse understands ‘down‘with contact and stopping.

All good.

Forth session and first ride day. He was fine to saddle and mount and a very good boy. As Fred put leg on to ask for forward, he exploded into bucking as he must have been doing all along. Because Fred had put all the preparation into his mouth and other work, Fred shut the bucking down straight away with a one rein stop then asked the horse forward again. The horse did not buck again and went on to be ridden for the first time in his life. Walk and trot on both reins, lovely and forward and calm.

Doing what he had been 'taught', poor boy.

Shutting down the buck with a ors.

About 3 minutes later...

Fifth day was Monday after a day off for us and the horses on Sunday. Again, the horse saddled and warmed up fine with no hiccups and went on to have another great ride with no issues.

Today Fred took the horse out for his first bush ride with Fabi for company and he was great. Hit the lead straight away and had a lovely ride out and about in the sunshine.

First bush ride out...no problems.

So, it took Fred four days to sort out the issues this other guy had caused the horse over three months, and to also get him going successfully under saddle, happy and confident in himself again. It’s early days and the horse still has a lot of work to do but so far so good. What went wrong? No mouth. That’s pretty much it. The horse was set up to fail as he was a nervy type that needed confidence yet instead was allowed to frighten the hell out of himself by bucking each time someone tried to ride him. He had in fact been taught to buck. I’ll continue to update on his next few weeks with us here.

As I said, we’ve had four of these guys come and go already and I will say that the lack of a good mouth has been the main issue with each one. We have two others here at the moment that Fred’s only just started on that had all sorts of issues at the last trainer and were pretty much unrideable and didn’t progress past the roundyard. One of them has already taken the award for worse mouth ever and the other wasn’t far behind:).

I’ll show photos of another one that we had here a few months ago in early May, a lovely Welsh Cob/Clydesdale cross called Scotty. Scotty had been with another trainer in Perth for about four weeks. Same story; bucked, volatile, couldn’t be ridden and so on and so on. To the very day his owner picked him up to come to us, the trainer was trying different things. On the last day at the other trainers we were horrified to hear that the horse had had his leg tied up or something and the trainer still couldn’t get on him. Now there’s an example of the wrong way to use leg restraints and why they have a bad name.

Testing the mouth...violent reaction and explanation of what's gone wrong at the other trainers.

Same story, no mouth, no confidence and poor Scotty had been able to frighten himself more and more as the trainer couldn’t shut the reactions he was having down and gain his confidence. He was also extremely girthy but again, all very fixable with the right training. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

3 days later

A week later

I probably sound like a broken record this week but 7 ‘failed’ horses in two months is pretty shocking to me, and Fred and I have been absolutely blown away by the lack of basic work and education that’s been put into these horses and especially that people have paid good money to basically have their horses seriously compromised. As Fred said to me yesterday, do trainers expect the horses to desensitise and mouth themselves??? Pretty upsetting but I’m very pleased we’ve been able to rehabilitate 4 so far and will hopefully send all 7 home successfully.

Spider the 'glamour breaker'.

On a happier note, we’ve had plenty of lovely and also fairly straight forward horses here to work on. Several very nice standies and lots of OTTB to work on. Plenty of lovely young horses here for starting which has been a pleasure. A few issues here and there but everything’s been going very well.

Cold mornings with plenty of frost and frozen poo.

We had a very bad month in June. Firstly, my old dog Davey had a stroke and had to be put to sleep. I had had him for 15 years and he was a fantastic dog. All our clients loved him and he was a real character and such a sweet boy. He was put to sleep in my arms with his whole family around him and I guess 15 wasn’t a bad innings but still, it was awful. Then, not two weeks later, Sammy our Jack Russell was hit by a car on the road and killed instantly. This was particularly hard as he was only 8 and the kid’s constant companion. I still can’t think about it without feeling very sad and we miss him terribly, especially Tommy.

The good news is, Schnitzel was lonely so we decided to take on an older dog called Frankie. Frankie is 6 and has been producing puppies all of her life but not anymore. She’s now a much loved pet and she and Schnitty get along really well. They’re very sweet together.

New member of the family, Frankie.

The only other real news is that we have a fantastic new lead horse called Fabi. Poor old Roy was diagnosed with a knee splint a few months ago and is on rest in the paddock. My friend Robyn has very kindly lent us her retired dressage horse Fabi who is absolutely ideal for the job. So far he’s been perfect and is actually even quieter than Roy if that’s possible! We are very grateful to have him and he’s a gorgeous boy with a very sweet personality.

Fabi doing an excellent job.

Fred and the kids and I managed to squeeze in a short break at the beach last month. Very relaxing Fred got to do lots of fishing and actually caught a few for the first time in years .