Meet Jet

14 Sep Meet Jet

Jet is my new little project. Something a bit different than usually. He is a 9yo, 15hh Hackney that has already been broken in to ride but has been out of work for over half a year. I’m confident that he will turn into a nice little allrounder. I don’t know much about him and I will treat him like I would treat any other horse that I start.
To me he seems like a good-minded horse that wants to do the right thing but he is a bit nervous and shy and doesn’t know any better.

Our first groundwork session went well and in my experience he was exactly as I thought he was going to be. He was a bit confused, fearful, disrespectful and even a bit cheeky.

Definitely love a bit of character!

You can easily see all those things in the video like shaking his head around and slightly pinning his ears when asked to move forward is nothing other than disrespect. This is fine to start with as he doesn’t know me and I don’t know him yet. We haven’t established our pecking order yet! This got established in our first session quite quickly. He learnt that I’m number one and he is number two. He is not number 10 though! He is number two, right behind me. He also learnt how to trust me. Remember you can’t get trust without respect and vice versa.

He will still challenge me the next day and the next day and so on. Just every day a little less and then one day he might only challenge the pecking order once a week and then just once a month. He is a horse and that’s what horses do! He has learnt how to move his hindquarters away from me, how to back up, how to lunge and leave just from me pointing and paying attention while going around. I don’t lunge my horses to get them tired and make them go around in an endless circle.

When I point they need to leave now in the direction they were asked to go, if I point again I want them to speed up and keep that pace until asked otherwise. I always want them to keep one ear/eye on me because I could ask them to do something else at any time.

You can’t teach them anything if they are looking over the fence thinking: “Why is this horse running in the paddock? Maybe there is a lion chasing him!” And this is where you have completely lost your horse’s attention and he is galloping around snorting and dragging you around the arena.

If you can keep your horse thinking and calm the horse would have probably thought: “it can’t be a lion, we have never seen one here and my owner is staying calm and not reacting so I’m sure she will keep me safe.”

Between all the exercises we did lots of desensitising. It should always be balanced with sensitising if you want your horse to be calm and quiet but will move his feet for you with a willing attitude.

I hope those two videos make sense to you. In the first one I wanted to show you what he was like to start with and in the second one how we finished the session and what he learnt and that session lasted about 45mins to an hour.

I will video Jet’s journey as much as possible. I look forward to sharing this with you all as I produce Jet to be safe and willing partner and then find him a suitable new owner. Remember it’s all about the person and the horse to be suitable for each other. It has to work both ways!