My Introduction to True Natural Horsemanship Part 2

In part one I told you about purchasing Scottie, and how great everything was in the beginning. Until one day it seemed, that everything just fell apart. There I was in my field, watching my horse run around with his custom made bridle dragging beneath him. Of course that scared the pants off of him. In an effort to 'get away' from the evil reins that were trying to eat him, he thought it would be a good idea to jump over the fence into the neighbor's pasture. That didn't go so well for him. He had not ever jumped 4.5 feet, and proceeded to crash through the fence, my neighbor's fence. Oh boy. Now I was really freaking out.

Scottie came out of that with only a scrape on his inner thigh. Thank God.




When I finally stopped crying, I realized I desperately needed help. So my quest for a trainer began. We went through a few trainers before we found the right match for us. All were some sort of natural horsemanship trainer, but we found that a few styles were too harsh, and there were also a few that were just not enough. We ended up working with Page Turner, a certified Frank Bell trainer. Page seemed to think that a series of events caused Scottie's mental meltdown. It probably began with the fact that he had never left home, or his mother before. He was rarely used, and now here I was riding him 3-4 days every week. Add to that the fact his previous owner had him in a rope halter, and I did not.

Apparently another big mistake I was making was letting him decide what gate to be in on the trails. Initially I couldn't understand why that was a big deal. If it was safe and my previous horse picked up a trot, well then, we trotted. No biggee, right? Wrong. At least for Scottie. Over time, to him, this meant he had control. After all, he was making decisions. These seemingly little subtleties had completely changed my new horse.

Page and I decided to start from the beginning. We pretended as if he had never been broken. I will tell you the next part of the story tomorrow.

Loretta

p.s. Interested in Scottie's version of this story? Watch for it in future posts!

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