Mind Games

Nothing builds the strength of a young horse and the confidense of a young rider as much as hours of trotting through varied terrain. The Forty Six mile ride really bore this out as every rider who had spent the summer training that way finished the ride with no difficulty.

Now we are moving more into training the minds of both the young horses and their riders with a winter of training in a training course that we have developed in a 4 acre pasture. Like everything else that I do with my horses, we are designing this course in as economical a manner as possible.

The course will include the following: an L shaped alley through which horses must be backed, logs to cross over, a tarp to ride through, a trailer to enter, a huge tractor tire to ride through, a gate to open, ride through and close with out dismounting, a sand pit for sliding stops, a wooden bridge to navigate, a car tire to drag with a rope,a string of poles to bend, and sand moguls and mud holes to traverse.

This training will require horsemanship skills that none of my riders have..yet. By summer they all will have mastered these skills.

By that time my riders will be bomb proof. They will be able to handle a variety of horses in less than ideal circumstances. I wish that just some of the time and effort that parents put into finding the mythical "bomb proof" horse would be spent in teaching skills to kids that make them more capable of safely handling horses.