A Good Start
Today was the day. Everything was set and Conner and I were as ready as we could be. It was just over 30 days since I had “officially” started working with Conner. It was July 12, 2017. We had done a lot in those 30 days, with varying degrees of success. We had learned to lunge (imperfectly), we had done some ground driving (he only dragged me once), and I had ponied him around the arena (which was mostly successful). He now stood to be groomed and tacked with no problem, bath time was no longer temper-tantrum time, and he was actually happy to go to work and see what adventure I had in store for him that day. So there we were in the round pen, after going through our usual routine of lungeing, ground driving, and mounting procedure, and it was time for me to swing a leg over for the very first time. I was nervous, I’m not going to lie to you. This was my first. The first one produced by myself from the ground up. I swallowed my anxiety, put my foot in the stirrup and swung the other one over.
Nothing happened. Conner raised his head, looked back at me, and stood there cool as a cucumber. I let my breath out. We stood there for a few minutes. I was talking softly to him, petting his neck, telling him what a good boy he was, and he was totally unconcerned. I gently slid off, brought the mounting block to the other side, and repeated the whole process again. This time, when I got on he didn’t raise his head, just stood the same as before. Again, I talked to him, petted him, and slid off. That’s it. That was Conner’s first time with a human on his back, and my first time putting my methods to the test.
When I slid off him for the final time that day, I praised that big baby horses like he had won the Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont. I was elated, relieved, and so so happy. I was so happy it had worked. All of it. The ground work, the mounting work, the trust, the bond, it had all held. Not to say it was perfect, far from it. I look back now with several years, and many more young horses under my belt, and I can see my own errors. Even so, it was a good start. That’s why I do this, to give every young horse I can a good start. I am not the world’s best, I doubt I will ever be, but I am continually learning, changing, modifying my approach. All in the hope that I can give each horse a good start.