Blues Tricks

Yesterday was one of the funnest days yet with Blue. When I went out to get him from his stall he actually turned his back to me. My first thoughts for the day were ohh no this is gonna be one of those days. After a little redirecting of energy I had his mind where it needed to be. It only took a couple minutes of of fast moving orders and getting his feet moving as fast as his mind and he was ready to willingly listen. Since he had gotten a pretty good workout Tuesday I was just going to take it easy on him for the day. Because it has taken him so long to catch on to the two rein stop I worked on that for about 30 minutes... its not that he isnt soft he, just collects and doesnt stop for a couple of steps. Afterwards I wanted to do even more desensitising, since he is going to a fairly novice rider, so i got out the tarp which he has already mastered on the ground... but I wanted to test him under saddle. Once he was reintroduced to it I mounted up and shook it all around while standing still. He stood perfectly still with his head down and I could already feel my head getting bigger. Then I started to walk him around while shaking the tarp. Though he didnt completely freak, he did start to try to run from... in the round pen, it was almost like he was running in circles! It didn't take to long before he was back down to being the same old boring Blue and once again I could feel my face just swelling with pride... this used to be a wild mustang that had more than once tried to knock my head clean off. Since I was feeling almost invincible I decided to try something that I had only done with one other horse, I was going to try to stand on the saddle, which was on his back, wave the tarp all around, and try to do anything else i could to scare him... Dun Dun Dun! I rested the tarp on his neck and hopped to my feet in the saddle. Once I felt at least a little steady I picked up the tarp and shook it around his shoulders, barrel, head, and tail. Not even a flinch!!!!! By this time my head was growing so big that I thought I better hop down off my "high horse"(sry i had to say it) before I just up and floated away. So I hopped down and started messing around with other things like "cowboying up" into the saddle, which is basically jumping into the saddle without stirrups. Of course Blue didn't have much to say about this so I starting prepping him for me to crawl under hime. Maybe 2 minutes of prep and I tried it. And what do you know, it worked!! One more stint of standing on the saddle with the tarp and I was ready to call it a day, and what a day it was. In just one day I had stood on the saddle and done everything I could to scare him, "cowboyed up," and crawled under him(which I do not reccomend to anyone). Man I love this horse!! Please leave comments and tell me how cool I am...or what i can do better. For other questions email me at thebartjr@gmail.com. Thanx

Blue's First Trail Rides

The last couple of weeks i have spent with Blue have been almost all riding, only using ground work as a warm up and refresher course. While he only showed any spunk in the round pen when i would ask him to lope, he isnt really big enough to give a good buck... So it wasnt really hard to ride it out of him. After about 5 rides in the roundpen he finally gave up the bright idea of bucking to get me off. Now i could work on the more refined aspects of starting a horse like 2 rein stops, moving off leg pressure, and trail riding. Because he is a mustang and it takes longer for things to sink in for him i rode him in the roundpen a lot longer than a domesticated horse. This time was spent working on stops since it took him a lot longer to get the two rein stop down. When I was thoroughly convinced that he was ready for the outside world i took him out into the pasture. After walking, trotting, then finally loping around the pasture and a lot more desensitising with the tarp i decided to just lead him up and around the short trail around our house. 3 or 4 more days of trail riding later Paige, his owner, came down and was exited about trying out a saddle she was interested in buying. Since she came all the way from Virginia i really wanted her to be able to trail ride him but it all depended on how he was acting that day.... She had ridden him before but only in the roundpen. He was just as calm as ever that day and convinced me to just warm him up and then turn him over to Paige. While she was working the initial kinks out between them i went and saddled up my boy Scooter. By the time i was up and ridin Paige decided she was ready to come out of the roundpen. Just to be sure I took Blue out and rode him around the pasture one or two times and then turned hime over to Paige. Aside from a couple of "communication errors" between Paige and I everything was so far going fine. Since he was doing so good with her Scooter and I decided to lead them on a little trail ride. During the ride which was probably a little more than a mile of thick trail and roadside(Blue did great with the few cars that went by) I became prouder and prouder of Blue because he was doing better than i could ever have imagined. The only thing I had a problem with during the ride was that Blue still wanted to wonder off the trail.... not exactly a huge problem for a "green-broke" wild mustang. This is just something that will come with lots of wet saddle blankets and age. During the whole ride we were looking for things to shake Blue up a little so I could teach Paige how to handle him when he spooks, but we had absolutly no success. He didnt even turn a ear when one of our neighbors growled by on his tractor. Overall Blue's first trail ride with Paige couldnt have gone any better.... they are just such a perfect match for each other. I dont know if it is because of all that time Paige spent with him this summer or just Blue's old wise man personality.... there is just something about the two of them that is magical.

Blue

Two of my most recent works in progress are Blue and Scooter. Blue, who i briefly mentioned my last post, is a four year old BLM Mustang that my cousin Paige adopted this summer at the auction in Archdale. At just under 14 hands and no more than 850 pounds he is not exactly a monster but got a lot of heart and loves attention. After they adopted him Archdale my dad and I spent a couple of days gentling him and getting the halter on and off. After we got him gentled Paige spent the rest of her summer vacation brushing, rubbing and working him in the halter. In the middle of October she gave me a call and asked if i would come and pick him up to start under saddle. Though his laid-back personality is perfect for a novice rider, it made energetic groundwork a pain. Even though most of the time he was willing to do what i asked he just wanted to do it on his own terms. It didnt take long before we worked out our kinks with each other and i started to get an exceptional amount of energy out of him. Since he is a mustang i couldnt move nearly as fast as i can with a domesticated horse because it takes longer for him to absorb the knowledge. For a couple of days just before i put the saddle on him i did the human curry comb and rode him bareback with a halter and lead rope for reins. The day i put the saddle on he did little more than walk away from me a couple of times because i had done sooooo much desensitising and had the surcingle on him a couple of times before. Once the saddle was cinched up good, after a few times of throwing it on and off, he didnt do much more than any other domesticated... a few bucks around on the lunge line to figure out what that thing on his back was and he was ready to ride. After the usual standing in one stirrup and rubbing all over i slung a leg over the saddle and off we went. Ultimately for the first two days he kind of let me down in that i was looking for a good round of bucking or some kind of exitement. It wasnt until the third day of riding, when i was going to lope him for the first time, that he gave me a little buck. But since he was so little and still getting his balance he couldnt put on a very good show and was soon over himself after a few rides. Now that i have had him a month and a half i have bridled him, stood on the saddle, flagged him with the tarp, walked, trotted, and loped out side of the roundpen, and trail ridden him. Today was the first time Paige got to ride him out of the round pen and he did wonderfully...besides 1 little hick-up in the beginning that was quickly resolved. We took about an hour long trail ride, Paige on Blue and me on Scooter, that even went up by the road where he met cars and a tractor for the first time... and never even balked. Though he is a little unspirited for my tasted i think he is going to make a perfect first horse for Paige.

.....My Story

... Well since this is my first post i have to say hey to all my "homies"...Dad(who some of you might know as Jimmy Thomas, the guy who trained Medicine Man and competed in the Mustang Makeover this year) , Dee(my sister), Mom, Helena(my "agent")... and everyone else who has made me who i am today. My story basically starts like this... a little more than 2 years ago i got my first horse, T. My sister had always adored horses and had gotten a beautiful, but lazy, quaterhorse that she named Scarlet when she was 14. A couple years later we bought a paint stud we named Redman. Well when 2 horses love each other you know what happens and 9 months later my dad and I came down the driveway and saw a little red and white head poking out of the stall next to his mom. Within a day I was out there imprint training T, teaching him to yield, roundpen, and lead. For the next year he helped train me as much as I trained him. At only one year old he had been through everything but riding, he was too young. Then, the summer before my junior year one of our neighbors and riding buddies asked if i would start a mule for him. I'm not gonna lie, this was not a pretty mule. At less than 14 hands he was almost a blue roan but with a lot of GRAY... So i named him Grady. Well in a month i had him well started under saddle and had trail ridden him for about 2 weeks. All in all he turned out to be a pretty good mule, and apparently i had a lot to do with this because just as soon as Grady was gone I started to get offers from other people with young horses that needed to be started. At first it was all mules and ponies, which wasnt all bad since I wasnt espescially tall. Then i had and epiphany, it seemed the more good ponies and mule I turned out, the more other people with real horses wanted me to train for them. So I decided to pursue what had become my passion almost overnight and here i am today... going to school till 1:30, coming home and working my my current horse till about 3:00, then working on our barn in progress. Sometimes i even have time to work my ropin horse Scooter but ill talk about him and my current project, Blue(who is also my first mustang) next time. Oh yea and I also plan on following in my dad's footsteps and competing in the Extreme Mustang Makeover next year... only, i plan to win...maybe, hopefully.