Owning a Horse: Chapter 1

I had always loan horses and went to college to get my horse management diplomas. But, this battle that I face with Mysti every day was never anything I could have predicted. I was never taught to tame a horse or to bond with it, but with instinct and time me and my horse are getting there slowly.

From the moment I found Mystique I knew that he was and is my heart horse. Only problem was I didn’t view him as he was too far away; big red flag, if you buy a horse go view he/she first. Many people told me he would be untamable, but I didn’t believe them. How wrong could I be, right? Well, guess you could say that I nearly gave up at one point in time; maybe a month or so after I’d gotten him. Even my yard manager didn’t think I could do it, Mysti was fearful of everything and would spook at my hand and was impossible to catch.

So, for about two weeks I’d just go out into our field and sit. This still didn’t have him convinced I was his friend and he would keep his distance from me. I took food out with me and gradually he decided I wasn’t so bad after all and would let me close enough to stroke him but only for a few minutes then he’d canter off. I still couldn’t catch Mysti but I wasn’t going to give him up any time soon. I spent 50% of my time chasing him around our 10 acres of land. And when I did get a hold of him he wouldn’t work or come anywhere near me.

The first time I lunged him he nearly killed us both, bolting through the arena fence into the field next to it; dragging me with him. From then on, I was so wary of lunging him and I still can’t lunge him without having someone there to back me up in case of a incident.

I have never had a horse quite like Mysti before and at first, I thought it would be easy to tame him and handle him.

However, I realised that I wasn't putting in place everything I had learned about horses. Mysti needed to create a bond with me and that wasn’t going to be easy. I found that the traditional methods that I was taught at college weren’t going to work with Mysti and I would have to try natural horsemanship methods.

I know people have different opinions of natural horsemanship, but I have always seen it as a way to understand my horses and for them to understand me. When I first decided to use natural horsemanship I didn’t know if it was such a good idea. But now when I look back at when I first used natural horsemanship methods with Mysti I can see a difference straight away. And for the next two to three months we made progress.

That was up until about four months into having Mysti and everything went backwards and it took me another month for him to even let me catch him again; I don’t know what happened but what I was sure about was the fact he was now scared of his lead rope and head collar, something that he wasn’t scared of in the past months.

The picture above is of one of the only times I’ve seen him lay down, but he wasn’t comfortable enough to let me close to him. I think I had only had him a few days in this photo.