High Country Cowgirl

The younger of the two women, the one wearing a pair of riding breeches, said, “I want him to not freak out every time he sees a flag. When I take him to a show, he’s fine, unless there’s a flag. Then all bets are off. He bolts, he tries to buck me off...”

“Well, he might have had someone train him wrong with a flag. We don’t know his history. So his reaction, at least to him, could make perfect sense, even if it’s doesn’t make perfect sense to you. But don’t worry, we can work on it. We need to operate on the principle of pressure. Operating on the principle that horses respond to the application or the release of pressure, we can desensitize this horse to stimuli. In this case, a flag.” Gabe nodded his head toward the other side of the arena. “Why don’t the two of you stand over there so when he reacts, you won’t be in the way, and I’ll show you what you can do with him.”

In Gabe’s free hand, he was holding a training device that looked like a long crop with a flag on the end. He had the flag grasped in his hand, so the Thoroughbred didn’t see it. Calmly, as was the way Gabe seemed to operate in the world, he stepped away from the horse, gave him some length of the lead rope and then showed the horse the flag.

The moment the horse spotted the flag, it started to rear and then buck and tried to run away. Gabe held on to the horse, and instead of taking the flag away, he waved the flag to keep the horse moving.

“If he’s not doing what I want him to do, which is stand still, I keep him moving,” Gabe explained while he worked. “In the horse world, whoever moves the feet is the boss. That’s the way it goes. All this horse is looking for is a leader. That’s what a horse is looking for in all of us.”

When the horse finally stopped moving and stood still, Gabe dropped the flag to the ground. For the next thirty minutes, Gabe worked with the Thoroughbred, repeating the steps over and over again, until the horse let him rub the flag over his body.

“We don’t want to teach him that this tool is another thing to fear, so we want to rub him all over his body with it to let him know that it’s not.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.