I'm new to this whole blogging thing so please bear with me. Let me be up front and say: this is a horsey blog! Its sole purpose is to help measure the progress my new horse and I make over the course of oh, well, however long I feel like. I thought it might be nice to share, and to be able to look back in a few months and note actual progress. I might even inspire someone along the way.
So, I'll start by introducing my new horse: her name is Mighty. This will be changed as soon as she's properly mine (please pass the PPE, please pass the PPE!), but I haven't yet decided on a name. She's an eight year old thoroughbred mare. She's never been raced or bred that her current owners know of. She's at least 16hh tall. She's currently a backyard, out-of-work trail horse (who hasn't actually been ridden in an awfully long time). When her owner's husband contact me through email, he sent me these:
So... she doesn't look like much, but she's a heck of a lot prettier than most of my other prospects. And cheaper. So I decided to go see her.
This is the video of her current owner trotting her about for me:
Hopefully this works.
She tosses her head, has a short and choppy stride, bucks when you ask for a canter, is generally stubborn about steering, is very sticky in her transitions (as in, you-can-kick-me-all-you-want-but-I-still-ain't-trottin' kind of sticky), and is a pain in the butt to catch. But for some reason, I love her. She's smart, quiet in spite of her jerkiness, very sweet on the ground (and in the saddle... when she's getting her way), has a lovely baby doll head (see end of video!), loves peppermints (I consider this to be a dealbreaker when horse shopping! ...okay, not really, but almost.), and I see loads of potential in her. So I'm going to get her. By my reckoning, a tack change (as the saddle doesn't fit her correctly and the bit is far too harsh for her soft mouth) and some consistency and she'd be a gem. I hope I'm not wrong (this has been known to happen)!
Slightly off-topic: I'm a college student (low on time, and low on money. Yay!). I've ridden for as long as I can remember (I started when I was 5 - classic example of "horse fever"). I used to do hunter/jumpers, but have recently gotten interested in dressage and eventing (although God knows I haven't actually done either... except for that one dressage lesson, that one time...). So I'm going to train her to do what I know, for now - hunter/jumper. Trail riding. Lots of bonding and bareback riding!
But one thing's for sure. She needs a ton of groundwork and flatwork before we ever get to the over fences part of her training. But hopefully she'll love jumping as much as I do!
Oh, and there's another catch. I'm going to be training her in hunter/jumper and (very) low level dressage in a side pull bitless bridle. Basically, a rope halter with reins. And I'm going to be clicker training her from the ground up. More on why I went from the hunter A circuit to rope halters and clicker training in a later post (no, it's not just lack of money! haha).
Now, I must stop procrastinating and go to sleep so I can be somewhat awake for the first day of classes tomorrow.
Heres to possibilities!
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