My First Day-1/20

My First Day
This morning was my first official day on the ranch. Martha wanted my sister and I to start off riding horses for now. She said we would be learning a large variety of other things as well later on down the road. The main guy they has been training their horses is named Terrie. He’s been on horses since he was 7 years old and is turning 60 this year. He had us get on a sorrel gelding named Mario. Sorrel is a coat color, it is a kind of mix between a chestnut (tan) and a bay (brown) almost a little redish colored. He was 8 years old and was used as a cutting horse. Cutting is when horses go into the arena with one calf. They are assigned a pattern to work the calf in. meaning they need to make the calf do curtain turns, run up walls, make circles, and it is all judged on how the horse works the calf, the smoothness of the pattern, they completed the pattern, and of any flaws. Cutting horses are generally pretty bomb proof, meaning you could fire bomb next to them and they wont even flinch. They are also usually pretty slow, but comfy and even. One of the mechanics Mario had to work on was moving forward, going fast. So what you would do with a horse who is pretty slow like that is you want them to like going fast. Doing roll backs is a good way to get them to speed up. A roll back is when a horse does an 80 degree turn by only pivoting one hind foot. It is a good exercise because the horses are taught to really book it when they come around the turn. One other thing Mario had a hard time with was on the backside of the barrel (right before you complete the turn) he would drop his should and cut in too close to the barrel, and so knocking it down. One thing you always want to teach your horse is how to move away from the barrel. The farther you are from the barrel the better. The faster your horse goes the shorter he will get, so the tighter the turn you will have. You also want them to know how to move away from it so that if you get in a situation where you are too close to the barrel you can try to save yourself a little bit. Mario was a very cute and mannered boy. He would be a nice horse for a little kid who is just starting out. Next Terrie had Amy (my sister) and I flip for between two colts. A colt is a horse under the age of 3. Neither one of them had a whole lot of training in them. They were broke, meaning they knew they could trust you on top of them and could walk, trot, and canter, but just needed some fine tuning. It was between a chestnut gelding and a bay mare. The chestnut was named Fred and the bay was named Ruffian. I won the flip so I got to choose first. I chose Fred. We had to pick them while they were on a walker. A walker is a machine that you can use to get a little spunk out of some horses. You put them in a pen. The pen is divided from the middle with gates that move around in a circle. So forth moving the horse. It keeps going around at different speeds until you are satisfied. I picked Fred because he looked very smooth, had a gentle eye, and knew a little bit more than the mare. Ruffian was behind three weeks in her training because she was sick and than hurt herself. She wasn’t as eager to go as Fred and didn’t have as much of a steering wheel. When we first started out Fred and I were doing real good. I was able to walk, trot, and canter him without any issues. I started doing some bending and moving away like I was talking about earlier. You move in a circle and use your inside rain to tilt their nose to the inside. You twist it and move it up a little with pressure from your inside leg to push them out. So they are bent to the inside but moving out. This is some what difficult because they think they are being told to move in, but once you can get them to move out in a perfect circle both direction you can try it at a trot and canter. As I asked for Fred’s canter something must have spooked him. Since he was just a colt it didn’t surprise me, but he reared up so high I thought we were both going to flip over. I tried to turn him because horses cant turn and rear at the same time. But he didn’t know what that meant so he just kept rearing higher and higher. Finally I tried to hop off as he landed. But one of my feet were caught in the stirrup. Now the horse was spinning and moving around while I’m trying to keep up with him on one foot and release my other one in the mean time. Fred spun around once more so fast that it released my foot and threw me back and a I fell. I landed right in front of him so when he landed he came right down and took off, but when he took off he stepped on the left side of my head. I stood right back up and started to check myself to make sure I was alright. I checked my breathing, my vision, if I was dizzy or light headed, and to really calm my adrenalin. One thing someone should always know while riding young horses is never ride alone. You should always have someone there to help in case something like this happens. There were plenty of people in the arena today so we were able to catch my horse and have someone check me over to make sure I was alright, I felt fine but everyone else was worried had a concussion. I took a few deep breaths and hopped right back on Ol’Fred. Some people looked at me like I was crazy but I never fall off and don’t get back on. You have to really. Or else you will grow a fear and you wont ever be able to get your head around anything else. If you can at least get on and be able to walk around happily that is great. Which is what I did. After we unsaddled the two colts we had to groom up all the sale horses. They needed to get their pictures taken to put on the website and try to advertise more. After they were all groomed we took them out and tried to make them stand nicely and put his ears forward. As usual the hardest job is getting a horse to put his ears forward. You get people waving around, whistling, making funny noises, moving something around, all just to make him look. He rest of the day was just slowly closing the place up. Making sure all the stalls had sawdust and water, blanketing horses who were going to be shown to potential buyers the next day, sweeping out the tack room and office, and organizing the bridle and halter rack. The best lesson I learned today was t always be thinking when your on a colt, and know what he does and doesn’t know. Miss-communication is the number one cause of a horse acting up. You can never tell what they will or wont do. Always be on your toes…and not on your back.