Expanded Programs Beginning Next Week

We are going to make Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays after work a new part of our program beginning next week.This is an exciting expansion made possible by the dedication of several volunteers.

Wednesday nights we will have a night ride that will leave the tack shed at 7:00 pm each Wednesday night--weather permitting--arrive in time tackyour horse and be ready to leave at 7:00--once again we have fallen back into a pattern of it taking way too long to saddle up.

On Tuesday nights and Thursday nights beginning at 6:00 pm we will focus on horse training. This is not to be used as an opportunity for kids to simply come to hang out, nor is it an opportunity for kids to come and ride while training is going on. It is for the actual training of horses and the opportunity to learn to train horses.

These sessions are not training demo's or clinics. This is an opportunity for participants to train horses and to learn to train horses. Lloyd will over see the Thursday  night sessions and Lydia will over see the Tuesday night session. They will be assisted by Jen and Elise and Rebecca when their schedules permit.

The training coordinators will be teaching ground work, amusement park, and despooking, driving, and teaching a horse to stand comfortably to be saddled. We won't get on the horses under training except for nights when I am present.

These expanded programs are offered at no charge for all program participants--you must wear boots and helmet when training. Check emails to see if a given session has had to be cancelled because of weather or another reason.

Participants in training will need to notify Lydia and Lloyd and me each week as to when you will participatek so we will know what size group to plan for.

Only certain horses will be used for training. Remember again that the purpose of these sessions is two fold--to have more riders understand natural horsemanship and to get more horses safely under saddle and in the woods.

The only horses to be used during the first several weeks are:

Polished Steel, Black Elk, Jessie, Rolling Thunder,Monique, Mozelle, and Zee. No other horses are to be used during these sessions.

Later in the summer I want to begin advanced riding training for the horses that we are well started under saddle but need to learn lightness and gain a sense of security. This training will be done under my supervision and while riders will be encouraged to participate and learn, we have to keep in mind that this kind of training requires a pretty experienced rider.

We have many solid trainers at our horse lot. I asked Lloyd and Lydia to be coordinators for these sessions because, aside from having a great deal of experience in how we train horses, both are very good at explaining and teaching.

When She Thinks Big: Corollas Sand Beach Horse, Croatoan's Memoirs

https://theflyingshetlands.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/childrens-horse-books-wild-horses-nurse-mare-foals/       is a link to a story on Kay Kerr's wonderfully illustrated children's book based on the life of Croatoan.

She has tirelessly promoted the book in an effort to bring more awareness to the plight of the nearly extinct, historic horses of the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

And those efforts might be getting ready to payoff in a great way.

Retirement

Our program has grown dramatically in the past two years. We are on sounder footing than we have ever been. If I had someone to do the things that I do in regard to running this program it would continue to grow. Age, absolute exhaustion, and the occasional wondering what it would be like to work less than seven days a week have increased the allure of retiring from this operation. Over the past two weeks I have been studying various options as to how best keep things going without my participation, but for chipping in the needed cash when we do not have enough to cover costs for a given month.

To use Jefferson's phrase, I have a wolf by the ears, afraid of the consequences of turning it loose and being worn out from holding on. The reality is that I can neither turn it loose nor hold on forever on the track that I have been on for the past several years.

The solution came to me this week. There are few problems that cannot be made better by spending time with a horse. The most extreme irony is that a major flaw in my lifestyle is that I am so busy working with horses and people that I do not have time left to spend time with a horse.

For me it is the peace that comes from the gentling, calming and training of a horse--what I once called "sweetening" of  a horse, that matters most.  During the first three months of this year I have ridden over 500 miles (not a figure of speech, literal record kept mileage) but had spent not a single moment in the solitary sweetening of a horse.

Demonstrating how to do so is rewarding, but teaching does not bring the peace that working a horse in a predawn round pen until that horse settles in and wants, yes, even needs, to be close to me.  The sweetening of horses has gotten me through many intense crisis over the last fifteen years.

This week I have not been in the saddle. I have been in the round pen.

 I am working with the horse shown above  and her half brother, both untrained Corollas--offspring of the famous Red Feather and half siblings of my Red Feather. She is the most beautiful Corolla that I have encountered. She is a nervous horse who finds the world to be a place filled with potential threats around each corner.

She only feels secure when standing close to her brother. When I finish sweetening her she will feel just as secure standing with me.

And as that process goes on my battery will be charged enough to keep our program going and, most of all, to maintain the integrity of the program so that we never become a place where spoiled little rich girls learn to ride in circles in the sand--seeking fulfillment in being awarded a blue strip of cloth.

So I am not going to retire, but I am going to rewire. I am going to rewire my schedule to allow me to spend time with a horse  instead of simply spending all of my time in the presence of horses.

Breeding For Temperment

Breeding for a particular trait is risky enough in all breeding programs. Breeding for a particular trait instead of breeding for over all type can be devastating to a breed conservation program.

That is specially true when one starts with a very limited gene pool.

That does not mean that random breeding of the foundation herd is always the best way to go. The result can be an even more limited gene pool.

This year I am going to seek to add temperament to two of my crossings. Corn Stalk, shown above being ridden by my niece, is the calmest wild Corolla stallion that I have ever encountered. He became halter trained in a matter of minutes, took a saddle the next day and a rider the day after. He has never shown either aggression or fear to a degree that could cause the slightest concern.

Persa is a nervous Shackleford. She is strong, fast and has tremendous endurance but is very reactive. Zee is a stunning cremello Choctaw who gives the occasional buck. Later in the summer I will breed each mare to Corn Stalk.

The results are not going to disappoint me.

Blurred Vision

Maintaining focus is one of the most important aspects of riding...and living. Distractions abound.

Recently a spring time cough has gone through several of our horses. I know that it is a reaction to pollen and the spores that become active as the ground warms up. I know that for some horses it can lead to a secondary infection that must be treated.

I also know that it comes every single year, sometimes worse than others, but never with any long term impact on the health of any horse. Yet it still hits me hard to hear a horse cough. I will never understand how after all of these years I am shocked every single spring at how green everything becomes. How could my mind not accurately remember this? The same way that part of my mind can not accurately remember that the cough comes, and it goes.

Still it wears on me.

Exhaustion comes with each changing of the clock. In the winter I generally wake up between two and three am. In the spring that means that I am waking up between three and four am. And when I wake up at four am there is not sufficient time to do the things that need to be done each morning without rushing. Few things are more exhausting than rushing. It does not help that in addition to being Deputy prosecutor for Isle of Wight county I am serving as a special prosecutor in a neighboring jurisdiction. Every year, as is happening now, I fall very far behind on answering emails and making blog posts. Eventually things start to fall together and by summer I have gotten back on top of things.

Still it wears on me.

More and more I find my self wondering if I have finally gotten this program on sound enough ground to turn it over to someone else, or to several others jointly, to run without me. The lure of being responsible for only a handful of horses and no other people is strong. To get up on a Saturday morning and to only have to be concerned with the tacking of my horse and my own safety in the saddle is a thought that sometimes actually makes me giddy. I realize that when it is all boiled away, the success of the program depends on me--not because of any talent or virtue that I have but simply because there is no one else on the scene who is in a position to give up everything else in their lives to do the things that keep us together. I also recognize that my big girls are not yet old enough to exert the kind of leadership by benign neglect that is necessary to maintain harmony among such a diverse group of program participants.

But still it wears on me.

But then I recognize that we have had a tremendous number of successes recently with which I have had to do nearly nothing--great teamwork on a monstrously successful fund raiser,garden going in, a significant number of horses trained well enough to be ridden in the woods, new horses being picked up and delivered completely without me having to do anything to get it done, and Jen and Elise are taking care of nearly all of the morning chores. And our program is growing. We have more participants than we have ever had. Our facebook group page grows weekly and through our program scores of people are introduced to nearly extinct strains of Colonial Spanish horses.

And these things restore me