At the beginning of this year, I put Fiona through a Colt Starting Clinic. A vet, with all her dogged persistance, convinced me to take Fiona to this clinic. The clinician was so kind. He came and spent 11 hours! loading Fiona into a trailer. It was 1am when he got her loaded. I was the only one who stayed for the whole thing. It was amazing.
The clinic went pretty well and the clinician got a halter on Fiona for the first time. He also saddled her and I rode her twice. The first time was very short and she was on halter with one of her back feet roped. The second ride started out the same way, but then he took the halter off (or tied the lead rope to the saddle, I don't remember) and took the rope off of her back foot. She did ok until he brought the flag into the roundpen. She got moving a little too fast, so I went into the fetal position and got bucked off.
Here's some great video of the whole thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQSNI3weybk
To answer everyone's question..."Yes it hurt!" I didn't break any ribs, which was amazing. I also didn't ride her again that weekend or the next (the clinic was 2 weekends long). The bottomline on this experience; I was too green, the horse was too green. The horse was too thin and fast, I was too fat and slow.
However, some good did come from my massive wipeout. I started taking riding lessons and got myself on a diet to lose weight. Fiona was moved from the rescue I got her from to Red Mountain Stables (http://redmountainstables.com/). She has her own stall now and there's plenty of room for me to work with her. She has put on weight;
Before:
After:
She's had her teeth floated, for the first time in 6 YEARS!!! She gets her hooves trimmed regularly. All good things.
We did have one setback in May of this year. I was trying to put on Fiona's flymask and she decided to fling her head into my face. The results was a spectacular shiner:
After seeing my resulting black eye, the same trainer I work with before offered to take Fiona to his new facility for a month of training. She got saddled and ridden pretty much every day in July and then was brought back to Red Mountain Stables at the beginning of August.
So here's a run down of where all this work has gotten her in terms of her behavioral changes. In October of last year here were her disguishing traits:
1) Had to be sedated to have hooves trimmed
2) Wouldn't allow a halter to be put on her and she had to be roped around the neck to move her anywhere.
3) She would bolt through gates or just plain refuse to go through them at all.
4) She would pace in her stall
5) She would walk away from pretty much any human who came near her and tried to touch her.
Now she has the following traits:
1) Stands still for trimming without sedation
2) Halters consistently, even after a good scare or if she's been pacing in the roundpen
3) Walks calmly through most gates.
4) Stands quietly in her stall or moves calmly in it.
5) She LOVES people. I can make kissing sounds in the roundpen and she will come right to me, without a halter/lead rope on. She actually get quite irritated if you don't pay attention to her.
She is much better about the flymask too, which is odd because I never worked with her on it after she almost knocked me out. When she came back from the month at the trainer's, one of the other horse owners at Red Mountain helped me put it on her...and she's never had an issue since. It's really wild.
I love this horse and I love watching her change from a scared, wild eyed creature into a curious and calm companion.
Awesome story!! You are a good soul and Fiona is seeing that in you. Best of luck to both of you.
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