New Project

I have a project to fill in hours of my day not currently filled by work.

Because my employer is getting back into horses, I have found myself once more surrounded by equines. Since I came back to WA I have been feeding, changing rugs and teaching 3 children to ride a horse.
On Monday I went riding with T and she told me that she was thinking of buying an unwanted, cheap horse as a project for me to work with. On Tuesday she rang to tell me the lady didn't want to sell the first one we wanted, but this other one was offered for free.

He is a black thoroughbred, nearly 16 hands (about as tall as me) and I have had him for 3 days now. He is about 5 and he has been broken in and then ignored. He knows nothing, not picking up feet, not trotting on the lead, not wearing a rug. I am going to teach him manners, obedience, how to lead nicely (not trampling all over you) and then hopefully the finer points of riding (walk trot canter, listen, stop, start, left, right, pretty, head in, feet up and maybe even jumping.)

So far I have been working on picking up his feet, leading nicely, looking at scary things like stationary tractors, cars, birds, jumps and trees. Then I made him run round a paddock to teach him some manners. This is the same as I did with Arakei in my horse training posts in 2011, the result should be the same, but Arakei was HEAPS quicker at picking it up. The aim is to get the horse to submit and follow you without a lead. It took me 40 minutes of him running today to eventually convince him to follow me.

He is a mainly docile horse, doesn't panic much about anything, tolerates quite a lot of things, but he is stubborn as a teenager when he doesn't want to do something. He doesn't flap around in energetic rebellion, he just pretends not to know what you want. Odds are on he doesn't know, but he won't try to figure it out.

The first thing I want to teach him is to follow me in a paddock. Then I will set up an obstacle course like I did with Arakei and walk him through it.

I will put up photo's what I get some good ones.