Long story short, a few weeks ago, I decided to “take a breath”, pull my foot off the gas and take a step sideways now with Sandman’s training so that I could just enjoy my time with him and hopefully take a bigger step forward later.
With horses, there’s this saying that you hear often, “take the time it takes now, so you take less time later”.
Last year, Sandman took a big step up in mileage and we went from shorter races to the 50 mile rides and he finished well with some top Ten’s and a 75 mile ride as well and more recently we’ve done some shorter rides with two night rides that he did great on so our training even though it was a “mish mash” from “the outside looking in” was seemingly going well BUT at the same time, I had this gnawing gut feeling that I was ignoring some holes in his training with the hope in mind, he would “learn as we go” which is really more like, just throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping it sticks but not knowing for sure if it will.
So having said all that and because this is my ride and my partnership with Sandman, I decided to take some time, ignore the pressure to race and instead deal head on with some of this stuff and change it up a bit, knowing from past experience, the sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results, so if you want things to change you gotta change something, and if for example in our case, knowing that cows out on the trail were a problem, we need to go get really close and really comfortable with cows and fix that and hopefully, along the way, learn how to manage thru some of these other obstacles, water, bridges, etc. as well.
As luck would have it, I was reading the October issue of Western Horseman and fell upon an article showcasing the beautiful Wilms Ranch in Fountain Hills and a sentence in that article which caught my eye, they had an obstacle course and a river to train on and wow, they had cattle as well. Another upside, Jeffrey and Amy who are really great trainers and who own the ranch also knew and worked with my friend and mentor Bazy Tankerlsley and trained some Al-Marah horses as well. So it was a perfect fit and I’ve been trailering over to their ranch for a few weeks now and working with Jeffrey in the cattle chute and in the round pen with these cows and this photo (above) and video is of Sandman last week, just before he actually worked a few cattle.
Keep in mind, a few weeks ago, if he saw a cow 50 yards away, he’d spin a U turn and head back (with or preferably without me) down the trail in the opposite direction. 🙂
We are making progress, I basically spent 2 hours sitting in this round pen, as cattle and horses rushed by us and this was on top of the prior week, pushing the cattle up the cattle chute, ultimately, after one “Hi Ho Silver” come apart, Sandman figured it out and I think he even got a little “cow’ey” as they say, and put his ears back as we cut one out and held him for a few seconds.
It was a lot of fun and we can now check off the “cow” box. The desensitization was palpable and transferable as we also spent some time on the obstacle course, and we will hopefully be moving on to the river soon.
At the same time, our training out on the trails continues and we’ve been doing some long training rides, albeit a bit slower and tactical and deliberate rides, as well and yesterday, we had a great 15 mile training ride with Susie and Quick in Browns Ranch and hopefully, later this week, I found a new 17-mile loop as well for a longer rider later this week.
Taking the time it takes to “breathe” and not worry about the clock while varying up the obstacles and moving slower seems to be working and a lot easier on Sandman and his psyche’s ability to assimilate new stimuli and actually a lot more fun for me as well.
If you get a chance to visit the Wilms Ranch, and visit with Jeffrey and Amy, it’ll be well worth it.
Enjoy the ride, you only get one 🙂 and this was a good one!!