TOA Blog Hop: Making of the Horse

The second in Beka's series of blog hops in honor of Archie's 18th birthday!

The Owls Approve Blog Hop #2 - Making of the Horse

Last week, we talked about our babies. This week, let's talk about our greenies. 

 Who trained your horse? Is your ponykins still in the process of figuring out this whole monkey-on-my-back thing, did you send off for thirty or sixty or ninety days, or did you buy a horse with all the bells and whistles? Who has helped your horse become what he or she is today?

As we covered last hop, Bohemian was a racehorse and then a TV horse before I adopted him in late April 2012. So he came to me fully trained...just for a different job. 

Bohemian's retraining to become a sporthorse was a partnership effort between myself and my trainer Laurie, in the form of regular lessons and occasional training rides. For years my arrangement with Laurie has been twice-a-week lessons, but for the first month or so of adopting Bohemian this morphed into a more fluid arrangement: instead of 2 regular lessons a week, I'd get supervised rides/mini-lessons 3 to 4 times a week. Once Hemie and I figured each other out, we went to a normal twice-a-week lesson schedule and have been doing that ever since. 

Retraining included groundwork.

His retraining to become a sporthorse went faster and smoother than I had anticipated, and my trainer commented early on that he was a fast learner. It was heartening to see that he was enjoying learning his new job. Within the first month he was jumping, learning about contact, using his body differently, going on trail rides, and even a cross-country school!

One of our first rides.

Within 5 months of adoption (September 2012), he had learned enough that we were able to compete at a local eventing derby, getting through both a dressage test and jumping round of both stadium and cross-country elements, earning our first ribbons. This is when I consider him to be officially retrained as an eventer. Since then, we've continued to learn this sport together as a team, with our share of both successes and setbacks.

Thanks again to Beka for the blog hop!