“Since you’re an advanced student now, I bet you are starting your own horses.”
“Why aren’t you starting your own horse? You’ve done all the ground work, haven’t you?”
“Why are you paying someone else to start JR? He seems really tame?”
Here’s my reply:
I have access to “natural” professionals who start colts. These professionals give the colt the best start on the road to becoming a saddle horse. If you had choices for your children as to where they would start their schooling, wouldn’t you give them the very best education in hopes that it would make a difference in their academic life. Plus there is the minor fact that the horse will be MUCH SAFER for me to ride. Having a professional natural trainer take on JR’s first experience with people riding him might just keep me alive. That’s how I feel about colt starting.
Pat Parelli feels that colt starting is so very important to a young horse that he has structured a two week Colt Starting class. He has told all his instructors that they are not allowed to start colts until they have taken and passed this course. The Colt Starting course is only open to those people who have passed Level 3 and it’s by invitation only. “One must have the “RIGHT STUFF” before they are allowed to pay their money to take this class! We are talking stringent admission policy.
When Jenny and Tony came back from taking this course the first year and told all of us what they had to go through during the two weeks, we all shuddered. The course is neither for the physically unfit nor the emotionally challenged. They both went back to the 2nd year and did it again. That year, Pat added difficult horses to the title. Difficult horses that couldn’t be handled by anyone, including stallions.
Pat feels that starting colts is so important that there should be specialized training for people who start colts.
Jenny and Tony start riding colts bareback. This gives them a chance to bail off fast when things start to go wrong. When a colt falls, Jenny and Tony have a better chance not to get their leg or foot caught under the horse if they are not trapped by a saddle and stirrup. I’ve known several colts to fall the first time(s) they are ridden.
So as not to scare the colt and wait until it feel comfortable, Jenny and Tony just sit on the colt waiting for it to make the first move. It’s a pretty scary first step for the young horse. After the first step is taken, Jenny and Tony take a lot of passenger rides. The horse just wanders around where ever it wants to go. Jenny and Tony are sitting on the back or in the saddle (later) just as relaxed as can be. (We call this passenger riding.) This reassures the young horse that things are OK with the human up there and he starts being relaxed while he’s learning to get his balance.
After the young horse is comfortable moving around, Jenny and Tony start playing the 7 Games while mounted. Of course the emergency rein position (bend to a stop) has been practiced before they will ever get on a colt. But they will start bending the young horse to a halt. They will practice the direct and indirect rein turns, backing, and sidepassing. They will also start lateral and vertical bending…vertical as in collection down the road. (When you take delivery of your young horse, you get the full deluxe package with little or no BRACE!)
They will do passenger riding again at the trot until that works out well and then again at the canter. The canter is another place where the colt starter has to be ready for anything. When the young horse first canters with that big hulking object up there, the hulking object drastically changes the young horse’s normal balance at the canter. The young horse can get scared and bolt. Jenny has described many fun first canters, which ended up with bolting involved. . . .shudder.
Are you starting to see why I don’t start my own horse?
JR gets the best start he can have with people who are as light as a feather, think like a horse and who can release faster than I can blink. You know it’s the release that teaches!
It’s been decided between Jenny and Tony…Jenny gets the gaited horse! He is now her coming three-year-old!