In March of 2014, I did the craziest thing I could have ever done. I got a horse. Why? Because Princess Ava wanted a horse! So, being the loving father that I was, I sought out to make my daughter’s dreams come true. Any father would. The problem was that I didn’t know anything about horses. In fact, I had never ridden one in my entire life. I hadn’t even touched a horse. So begins a perfect recipe for disaster. And that is exactly what it turned into fast.
May I introduce you to Spirit. She was three years old when we got her. She was a very docile horse. She had little to no spook in her. She was not afraid of people, kids, dogs or anything. You could walk up to her and touch her face, neck, body, legs, everything. She would eat out of our hands. She would come up to you without hesitation. If she was a dog, I guess everything would be okay. But she wasn’t. She was a thousand pound animal!
At this point we knew absolutely nothing about horse behavior. We had no idea that in Spirit’s head, she was the Queen. Every time that horse nudged us and moved us even a half an inch, we had no idea that we were confirming to her that she was the boss. So on the outset, she seemed like a real nice horse, easy to get along with, and great with kids. Boy was I wrong. Since we knew nothing, we turned to the help of a neighbor to get the training started. Well, I suspect that this horse had never been expected to do anything. What started out as a docile sweet horse turned into a monster. She began rearing up while she was being led, bolting and biting. If I’m not mistaken, she clipped Ava and Frank in the back, and me in the ribs. So this got real unsafe real fast.
We needed solutions. We were pretty close to just giving up on the horse thing. The last straw came one evening when I was trying to get her to follow me without a lead rope. I saw some things on YouTube that I thought would be helpful. So at one point she came toward me, and little did I know, she was not hooking up with me. She was trying to move my feet. And I didn’t know so when I reached out to pet her, she reared up like a crazy horse. That’s when I got struck in the ribs. So I was ticked. I tied her up hoping she would calm down. When I thought she had, I went up to her to pet her again. She reared up again! This time she stayed up in the air for what seemed to be an eternity. It was pretty scary. I was pretty mad. I untied the lead and unhooked her and whacked her on the butt as hard as I could and she ran off.
I went in that night and declared, “No body gives that horse any food or water but me!” So when I came home from work the next day, there she was pacing back and forth in front of the gate, neighing and kicking the water bucket. She was hungry and thirsty and I thought, “A-ha! Now I got you where I want you!” So that evening, Spirit and I did a little dance around that water bucket. She came in to get water and I would shoo her away. I was determined to not let her drink until she stayed in one place. So we went round and round that water bucket, and she’d come in and I’d shoo her away and she’d come in and I’d shoo her away. She finally stood still. Then I let her drink. We did the same thing with the food. I believe that was our break-through moment with Spirit.
I look back now, and I see how my confidence was shot, I was out of knowledge, and I was ready to give up. But what happened around that water bucket that evening was the first time that I made HER feet move instead of the other way around. It was the first time that I had complete control of the situation. It was the first time I felt safe. This was our turning point. Little did I know I had stumbled upon Clinton Anderson’s secret to gaining a horse’s respect: moving their feet forwards, backwards, left and right!
Now we weren’t about to go sink thousands of dollars on a trainer for this horse, and our confidence in other people’s horse knowledge had been shattered. We had almost gotten killed already. So our only option was to train the horse ourselves. Now, looking back, there are other ways to do this, but this is the way we chose. So I spent hours reading on the internet, watching YouTube videos, and even ordered books. Well it wasn’t long before we found Clinton Anderson and his Downunder Horsemanship. We saw several of his videos on YouTube. We watched the Outback Adventure where he trained a wild Brumby. We saw him literally fix horse problems time after time. Someone had lent us a DVD he had put out called Horsemanship 101. After listening to his philosophy regarding horse behavior over and over and seeing him use that philosophy to train a horse and get results, we were convinced that this was going to be the most effective and safest way to go.
It wasn’t long until we were No Worries Club members and in possession of the Fundamentals Kit and the Colt Starting Kit put out by Downunder Horsemanship. We did everything The Method prescribed to do three times over: once with me, once with Ava, and once with Frank. Poor horse! All four of us were learning together. But we did it!
The proof is in the pudding. The day had finally come. We did all our homework. We’d done everything we knew to prepare the horse for her first ride. We even did a dress rehearsal at a local ranch to make sure we had it all down. As C.S. Lewis said, “All prayers said, all teeth clenched… If you funk this, you’ll funk every battle all your life. Now or never.” I’m happy to say that nothing exciting happened. It was a textbook ride. She had two rides in the round pen and then moved out to the arena. I probably did about five more rides and then handed her over to Ava to continue her training through the Fundamentals in the Downunder Horsemanship Method. Eventually Ava moved her out of the arena and all around, up and down our ten acres.
That’s how we started. Sadly, as quickly as we started, we ended. Winter came, the rain came, light was gone, interest faded, and the other things of life soon took precedence. We had a lot of setbacks, changes, discouragements, and difficulties in the horse thing, That was over two years ago. We’re gonna give this another go. Last time, our goal was to simply ride the horse. That we did. We’d like to take it much further now. We want to continue to learn and learn well, and maybe someday soon pass on what we’ve learned. While that horse was getting a solid foundation, so were we. And now we’d like to build on that foundation.
There are more kids in the family that want to learn, or need to learn. It was great experience for our entire family. I believe that this experience is not over. 
We still know so little about horses, but we now know enough to continue in this adventure safely and effectively. It may one day turn into a business if we work hard at it. And why not? I never thought we’d come this far. Let’s see just how far we can take this.