“Who knows? Have patience. Go where you must go, and hope!”― J.R.R. Tolkien
I have found that training a homebred is a very different experience from either retraining an Off the Track Thoroughbred or buying a young horse from someone else. With a baby you have no idea how they are going to turn out. You hope they will inherit the best characteristics of their parents, but really it’s just a game of chance. The advantage is that you are starting with a clean slate.
From the moment that Merlin was born his education began. While he very wobbly latched on to nurse for the first time we started imprinting, running our hands over his body and accustoming him to our touch and smell. Within the first week we introduced him to a halter and began teaching him how to lead. Rachael would guide him along with one hand on the halter and the other around his haunches, while I led his mom in front of them.
By the time he was 6 month old he was accustomed to being tied up, groomed, having his feet picked, wearing a fly mask, blanketing, and ponying. All of these small steps in his education helped to establish trust and obedience that translated into making it a lot easier to begin groundwork training.
When he was a year old he was kicked by another horse out in the paddock and his tendon was partly severed. This meant that he had to learn to have his dressings changed and leg bandaged. Healing was a long, slow process, but by the time he was 18 months he was sound and we were able to start teaching him to lunge.
We started by hand walking him around the arena and teaching him the basic voice commands for halt, walk, trot, and to give to pressure (back, over). We then progressed to free lunging in the round pen using the same commands, followed by lunging on a line, and then introducing a saddle and bridle.Because of his solid foundation, he never gave us a moments trouble and quietly accepted everything we asked of him (except for the occasional high spirits!).
2 Years Old
As a two year old, we sent him to a trainer for a month to be backed. We weren’t in a rush and felt that he was still very young with a lot of developing to do so, at that stage we didn’t do much riding. I would work on groundwork and lunge him for 20 minutes, then Rachael would hop on and take a stroll around the round pen for 5 minutes changing directions often, working on getting him used to the reign and leg aids at the walk.
In the summer of his third year we began to ride him in the arena for the first time. Initially on the lunge, helping him connect the voice commands he knew so well, with the riders’ aids, and then off the lunge, but with someone still on the ground to help direct him.
He was a super star from the get go, being absolutely chill about everything we threw at him, whether it be working over ground poles, taking him out on his first trail ride with a group of 5 other horses (and cantering in a group!), or riding an obstacle course.The only issue we had to work through was his tendency to resist by planting his feet and not moving forward when we first used leg pressure. However, we found the best way to remedy this was to have Rachael on the ground reinforcing my aids with gentle use of the lunge whip. I also tried to ride out on little trails as much as possible (which he loves) to encourage him to think forward.
Being the first homebred I’ve ever trained, I don’t know if it's just his laid back nature or the result of three years of consistent, gentle training, but he has been by far the easiest horse I have ever brought on. I’ve loved every moment and look forward to seeing how he is going to develop and where his talents will lie in the future.
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