Another video from rising today. One of the things I think is so neat about this horse is how much he will flex his hind leg joints. He really sits down on a hill!
Another short video from today. I took this to send it to a friend, but I wanted to share with you guys too.
GUYS! Amigo had his FIRST DAY AT WORK ON THE FOREST! He lost his confidence going into the timber - which I have been told is pretty normal - so I just got off and hand-walked him for about a mile, but the rest of the time we RODE. He was super happy the second half of our ride and SO brave. We will be going on the forest again this Thursday. Will post more videos then!
While I am stuck in Missoula waiting for a friend to come pick me up thought I would blurt out some thoughts I have had about the last couple weeks with Amigo.
1. I am SO proud of him. His attitude towards working together is slowly shifting and although he is still prone to giving a HARD “NO” to things he doesn’t understand or is intimidated by I can feel that his tolerance towards coping through such events has improved.
2. He is starting to get a reasonable level of fitness. Amigo had been off the track for about a year before I bought him and was at a beautiful weight but he wasn’t a fit athlete. His refusal to go forward made that very hard… That said, his muscle tone has increased a LOT in the last couple months and he feels stronger and more coordinated.
3. This horse can work a LOT longer than I thought he could and still learn. I rode him a LOT on Tuesday and I could have probably rode him a lot more than I did on Wednesday. His ability to learn on Tuesday only increased as the day went on. we stopped on a great note. I think thoroughbreds are far tougher mentally and physically than we frequently give them credit for. They have been bred to be super athletes and riding for 20-40 minutes is basically a light warmup for them.
4. His back was perfectly fine after riding him on Tuesday too. It helps me know that my equipment fits and that his muscles are getting conditioned. There will hopefully be days I ride him for 6-10 hours a day this summer. So knowing that my tack fits him is super comforting and gives me confidence that his body will hold up to the work.
5. I am starting to feel safe on him. I know that he still has a bucking switch- we found that on Wednesday- but the old evasive behaviors he came with are slowwwllyyy disappearing. I know he is more emotionally stable than a couple months ago and can actually have FUN riding him.
6. When I got Amigo I was thinking of him being a resell after 6-12 months.. I don’t think he is going
I got to take Amigo to a horsemanship clinic at the historic 9 mile ranger station near Huson, Montana, this Monday and Tuesday.  I rode amigo for about five or six hours on Tuesday and then maybe an hour and a half on Wednesday.
 this horse is improving so much. He is getting more confidence, and though I could not say he is necessarily getting curious, he’s more willing to learn new things.
 I think our big win for this week was teaching him how to work over his back and stretch down and forward on cue. This really helped him in his transitions. We figured out how to get a nice collected, walk, trot, and how to find collection in the center. I wasn’t sure he was ready for this, but our instructor guided me through, asking him for more. The result was awesome! After each series of movements Amigo would put his head all the way down and YAWN for anywhere from 15 seconds to a couple minutes. What a dude!
Amigo has earned a day off, and I may be taking him out on one of my allotments tomorrow!
Keep it up Amigo!
Amigo was THE BOMB today. I’ll do an update tomorrow on what went good and what went bad, but until the. Please content yourself with this video of him going through the river.😁
To finish what I was saying in the video..😂
Amigo was actually fun to ride. Not little fun, big fun! I was so happy and pleased and proud of him because I asked him to do a couple things we haven’t done yet and he put in some really good effort.
If guys have been following from the beginning, there is not a snowballs chance in heck we could’ve done this even two months ago. I’m so happy with how much this horse is improving, how much better he is getting, and how much he is brightening up to going on adventures together.❤️
Keep up the good work Amigo!!
Getting over the creek bed! it took a good 30 minutes to convince Amigo he could get across this. He came across it again a few more times later in the day. He wasn’t ready to walk in and out yet, but zi think he will next time!
It has been a bit since I posted. Reata, my 2 yo filly has been getting my primary focus as she punctured her inner thigh near her Achilles tendon a couple weeks ago and we dropped about $1200 on vet bills.
I have been putting little sessions on Amigo the last couple weeks like usual and some pieces came together today. Woah!!
Vincent and I took Amigo and Pep out for a stroll. I was SO happy with how much better Amigo was about separating from Pep and we went quite a bit farther out than usual.
We got our first canter transition outside the round pen today - a big deal as the footing had been real crummy.
Keep it up Amigo!❤️
So Amigo and I went on a little ride down the road today and then did some roping. He was the star of that show. I couldn’t catch a damn thing.😂
 amigo and I had a good day today. He’s still kind of crabby about being scratched and rubbed all over, so we spent quite a bit of time with that before we mounted up. Vincent was about to put his car in the garage to change the oil, so I asked him if he would let Amigo and I treat him like a big white cow. He drove down the road a bit for us, so Amigo could feel like he was chasing something. Boy it sure made a difference in how willing and happy he was to go forward!
I think Amigo actually had a bit of fun chasing that car down the road!😍  He hung out with me a bit after I took his halter off, that’s the first time he’s done that, so I’ll just take that as a compliment.
Sharing a video that I took this morning for a friend. Since I am re-starting Amigo in a bosal I figured it wouldn’t be bad to put here as well because it shows how I use it.
Despite Amigo being 9 this spring I am basically treating him like a green 3 yo. As his steward, I am taking the time it takes to fill in any missing gaps so that he can has the tools to be successful farther down the road.
In this video I talked about the mechanics of turning a horse in a bosal. In this training system you don’t hold tension (contact) on the reins for more that 1/2 a second. You also don’t pull on both reins at the same time. In turning right and left the goal is to get your horse to follow your hand - not the contact in the rein. I am pretty tickled with how Amigo is picking this up.
You can see right at the beginning of the video that he is pretty crabby about moving forward when I ask him to. He’s way more willing to be forward than he was a couple weeks ago, and I am thinking of a couple ways I can get him past that crabbiness without getting chucked into the next county.😂
Yesterday I rode him and had him watch Vincent fire his rifle in the back yard. He only spooked once- and not even that badly.
I haven’t posted anything about our trip to Hamilton last weekend because I haven’t been able to figure out exactly how to put into words what my takeaway from it was… but it was important! I’ll have to write a couple drafts before putting it up. Maybe this coming week.
So the last 5 days in a row I have been ”flanking”Amigo. This exercise serves a couple purposes- the first is that it prepares a horse for a back cinch. However, the main reason I have been working on this exercise so diligently is because Amigo has a long history of being put under pressure and successfully blowing up (bucking and rearing) and running away (dragging people) from pressure. I want him to realize that his way out of pressure is to stop his feet and engage with the situation. Eventually he will get to the point that he looks at the strap in his abdomen whenever I tighten it. I may even get him to the point that he can lead by a flank strap- but we are a long long ways from that.
I think Vincent and I took this video on Sunday? At the time I was only putting a teeny tiny bit of pressure on the flank strap and kept it consistent until he stopped. If I had gone right to giving him a BIG squeeze I was concerned he may really damage the round pen and/or his legs. We have since worked to where he can move around the pen with me rhythmically bumping on the rope and him ignoring it. I can also stop him by holding the pressure without any bucking. That said, he is still switching his tail and throwing hands (legs) over it. We are on the long slow boat to Rome.
He is starting to take prolonged looks at the flank strap. And his periods of bucking went from lasting a couple laps around the pen when starting to just a few kicks before he stops.
The goal is to get him to where he couldn’t give a hoot about the whole thing.
ALSO
I am taking Amigo to our friend Cody at Cody Deering Horsemanship this Sunday. I would like to get his thoughts on what is going well, what I need to change, and what skill sets I need to pick up to help Amigo progress in our training. Honestly, when you have had a week like I have, with a horse pitching multiple giant fits each day, it’s easy to get discouraged… the learning process is anything but linear and I think Amigo
Third video - getting Amigo to come off the stirrup. He got three bumps on the air right off his rib cages, three gentle bumps on his rib cage, and then a firm thwack righ behind the stirrup with the crop.
Again, this horse’s primary issue is a lack of FORWARD. If I kept gradually increasing the pressure from the stirrup to get him forward he would start getting irritated because I would be NAGGING. He doesn’t need to be nagged - he needs to be corrected on his understanding of what an active stirruo means.
Definition of nagging
Nagging: (of a person) constantly harassing someone to do something.
Definition of correcting
Correcting: tell (someone) that they are mistaken.
Ex: "He had assumed she was married and she had not corrected him".
I was VERY happy that he jumped forward like he did right at the end of that video. I had bumped him just a little firmer to see if he would trot out willingly. It does not bother me at this time that his reaction was a little over the top. As he gets re-educated on the meaning of the stirrup he will move off it’s pressure more calmly.
Also, you’ll see that I was taking slack out of the lean line during several portions of this video. This was another exercise in getting him to read my body language. What I wanted him to do was slotted his neck laterally and then stop. He figured it out before we were done.
Video two - working at getting Amigo to use himself more evenly around the circle.
Amigo had a pretty busy day today.
We started with roping all four legs while tied to the trailer. Vincent and I have done this with Amigo a few times and he is picking it up quite quickly.🥳 He understands to give his legs to us when we pull on them from various angles without fighting. This can save his life if he ever gets caught in barbed wire - a lesson I learned all too painfully back in 2020.😢
Then I worked on his ability to lead by a front foot - a skill set that precedes being able to hobble a horse. In this part of the country pastures may be a couple hundred to a couple thousand acres of grassland. 😍 If I see to get off and have him stand still then he HAS to learn how to be hobbled🙏. Just about every horse in this part of the country gets taught how to do this out of necessity. We’ll end up doing this a few more times before actual hobbling him.
After that we flanked him. As in put a rope around his abdomen while in the round pen in preparation for wearing a buck cinch. I do plan on being able to drag objects off of him - so he needs to learn how to be non-reactive to a back cinch which starts with this exercise. We’ll end up having to do quite. But of work here because this horse can BUCK 💥. Like back feet above his ears which at 16.3 🦅 is pretty substantial….
After this we tied him to the trailer and roped him. Of all the things Amigo and I have done together this is what he is least concerned about. We did this while he was naked and while he was saddled. Doing both is important because horses can get really concerned about the sound of a rope sliding over leather. You want to get them to where they aren’t concerned about that sound at all.
Then I did some work with him on the lead line - which is the video in this post. Amigo has really started to liven up off the lead rope 🙌 . However, he is still learning how to balance his body off my body language. Ex: pick up an inside shoulder, yield a shoulder away from me, a
