But On The Other Hand...

There was one advantage of being sick for so long. While I had little energy to train, I also had little incentive to be concerned about getting injured. I have not been comfortable hopping on an untrained horse to give him his earliest rides for a reason that few people can understand. While not pleasant, breaking a few ribs is no big deal. Toting water, rolling hay, digging fence posts with broken ribs are all very big deals. In short, getting injured is not the problem. Having to continue to run our operation while injured is precisely the problem. Over the summer I came to realize that no matter how sick I was, the horses still got taken care of one way or another. I really did not have much too lose. Edward Teach is the prime beneficiary of my summer of convalescence. His training had come to a stalling point. Months earlier, Abby had ridden him bareback in the woods twice. The fact that Abby can ride a horse is not a testimonial to the horse's training. Abby can ride a horse be he trained or not. Even Red Feather has never been able to toss Abby.

 Even as a teenager I could not ride remotely as well as Abby. I do not feel bad about that because I have never met anyone that could ride as well as Abby.

 Like all old men faced with a problem, I went back to looking at what used to work. I applied the same boring principles of natural horsemanship that Rebecca and I used successfully on other wild horses. I worked him the way that Lido and I used to work horses. I worked him without stopping to ask what big name clinicians would do. I worked using what horses have taught me instead of worrying about what clinicians have tried to sell me. And what I worked with him worked. I rode him in the woods several times--he never resisted--he never flinched--he showed no fear and he gave no pain. My initial encounters with this young, severely injured wild stallion had been intense. When he came to us he had a wound in his neck large enough to put a baby's face into it. He showed hints of having a touch of Red Feather in his heart. It turns out that he is as tractable as Croatoan.

He has one son so far, Ashley's colt, Peter Maxwell. Peter is 1/2 Corolla. His mother Quien Es? is a Chincoteague BLM cross. We will train Peter the same way that I worked his father with complete allegiance to the horse and with no concern for anything else.