Savy's Progress part 3 - The training

Savy in one of our lunging lessons

So Alisha and I started this fall working with Savy. Each lesson, she would work with him for the first half hour and then the second half hour she would teach me the techniques to continue working with him during the week. Every week I had homework and I tried to make sure Savy and I worked 4 - 5 time per week on top of the hour lesson.

The first thing Alisha said we had to work on was Savy respecting me. Although we had a bond, he pushed me around a lot and had no respect for my personal space. We worked on the respect issues and that lead to the lunging issues. Apparently, when he didn't respect me, he decided what he wanted to do and when which was why I was having issues with the lunging. It wasn't long before we had him lunging and starting to build muscle. I also learned how to do long lining and driving which were basics that I could use for many different exercises to work on his hips and sacrum.

By the end of October, we had him to a point where he wasn't showing any soreness during our workouts and had built up some good muscle. I had Dr. Hunt come back for a follow up and she told me she never thought she would see him as sound as he was. That was the most awesome thing I had ever heard! She told me he should be up for some light riding to help continue with building his conditioning. I danced that day!:)

It was at this point that I decided to trailer Savy to a tack store down south of us to get him fitted for a saddle. (I'll talk more about my saddle woes in part 4). I went through the issues of getting him into the trailer, got him down there and fitted and went to get him back into the trailer to go home and he wouldn't get in. I don't know what happened but I think he had just had it with getting into the small two horse trailer. With the way he was acting, I was afraid to force him into the trailer again for fear of making the situation worse. After four and a half hours of trying everything I could think of, we had to leave him there until I could come back the next day with Alisha and a bigger trailer. This was the worst day I have ever had with Savy. As the hours wore on, I became a mess and felt like a failure. A failure to myself and my horse.

Alisha and I came back down the next day and she worked with him for two hours before we got him onto the large stock trailer and took him back home. The entire experience was expensive and exhausting. The next week in our lesson, we worked on trailering as I was supposed to be taking Savy to a clinic Alisha and her partner were doing the following week. She told me that we wanted Savy to feel like the trailer was a safe place so when we wasn't in the trailer, we made him work hard outside of the trailer so he would want to be in the trailer where he didn't have to work. Pretty soon, we had him walking on and off the trailer with no problems.

The day of the clinic came and it only took me 10 minutes of approach and retreat to get Savy on the trailer. There were no issues, no balking, nothing. Another victory! At the clinic that day, Alisha took it one step further and we even taught him how to self load. It was amazing to think that only two weeks ago he had refused for four hours. We also did a ton of desensitization exercises at the clinic which my high strung horse needed a lot.

Right after thanksgiving, Savy came up lame again. Dr. Hunt came out and said she thought he strained his stifle - probably running around in the field since he had been fine the day before. She did some chiropractic work and said to do some light walking. He was improving slightly and because it was around the holidays and we were going to be gone for a week, we decided to bute him for the week we were gone and put him on stall rest. I came back the following week and he seemed to be doing much better. Not 100%, but probably about 85% better. I had Dr. Hunt out again who was amazed at how quickly he had healed as a stifle injury can have a horse out for a few months. She did some aqua-puncture on him which is acupuncture where she inserted some B-12 in and left. Two days later, Aslisha and I had our next lesson. Savy was at 99%! It was amazing how well the final treatment had worked.

This leads us to where we are today. Savy and I have been working on more driving and long lining. We have just started working on transitions - specifically walk to canter transitions on the lunge line. He has an issues of misfiring while in the canter and has a very difficult time picking up the right lead from the walk. This is because he has a bit of a lazy right foot. Like I said, his movements were a mess when I first got him and we have basically had to retrain him to use his body correctly when moving. Our next challenge will be to start working with him under saddle. First, I have to get a saddle....

To be continued.......