Savy's progress part 2 - The trainer

So when I said before that Savy would not lunge...I am dead serious. He would just stand there and look at me. I would crack the whip - no reaction. I would smack him in the butt with it - no reaction. It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen. I do know part of the problem was with me as well, I honestly had never lunged a horse before (let alone long lined or drove) and after a few failed attempts by different people at the barn, I decided I needed to get some professional help. I stopped taking my riding lessons because, well, I wasn't really riding a whole lot anyway and I needed the money to hire a trainer.

I had lots of suggestions for trainers from different people but with all of them - I would have had to send Savy away to another barn to be worked with. Now I will admit something about my self here (a little real life confession) - I am a bit of a control freak. Ask my husband or any of my co-workers...it's true *hangs head*. So I didn't like the idea of sending him away for two reasons. One, I want to have control over Savy's training. Especially if I am working with someone I don't know very well, I am not just going to send my injured horse off to some other farm. I have heard way to many horror stories of issues with horses at trainers and although I know that not every trainer is like that, I also feel like the best way to combat that type of situation happening to you is to be overly cautious. The second reason is that I really want to be involved in his training. I don't like the idea of sending a horse away and then they come back all nice and ready to go. I want to put the work in, I want the sweat and tears to be mine. I want to put that investment into the relationship I have with my horse. And, I want to learn really badly.

So because of that and because I am not made of money to trailer my horse once a week to a trainer - I had the challenge of finding someone who would come out the the barn and work with us there. You have no idea how hard it is to find someone to do this. I contacted every trainer that someone suggested - I went online and started googling trainers in our area and email them. Finally a got a positive response.

Alisha came out to meet with me mid August. I told her about the issues I had been having with him and she listened. She spent some time looking at him and working with him. She was extremely gentle and Savy seemed to respond to her right away. She told me that her philosphy of training is based on natural horsemanship and she believes in interacting with horses based on thier natural instincts. I liked her instantly. I later learned that another woman from my barn had worked with her to help train a previous horse and highly reccomended her.

So we set up a time everyweek to get together. She understood my need to learn how to do the training techniques and actually encouraged it. She said she would rather see me become successful with Savy and felt like, because we had such a great bond, he would respond faster to the training. So beginning of September, Savy and I started our training.

To be continued.....