Cob Jockey

I'm so behind!


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 I said in my first The Owls Approve Blog Hop, Connor flunked out of the driving barn for being too hot to be a lady's driving horse.  I can only imagine how they came to that conclusion, after having been on his back for several scrambly spooks.  His spooking breakdown is like 90% spooks-in-place (cat crouch spooks), and 10% teleportation, where you suddenly regain control of him and go "How the heck did we get over here?" That, in a cart?  No thank you!

But, he got a really good basic education both under saddle and I assume in harness from them.  When I got him, he had basically the equivalent of 60 days on him, and had then been in a field for about 9 months.

Our first, uh, "jump" - taken before I owned him.

Since then, it's been my trainer training him through me.  That is to say, I ride, and she is able to essentially explain to me what she would be doing with her aids if she were the one riding him.  Not everyone can teach in that way, and I'm grateful that she can.

Sometimes things go so sideways that she can't figure out what's going on, and then she'll ask to ride him.  She's probably been on him a total of 10-15 rides, including a clinic, in 3 years.

He got a few trainer rides while I was in California this summer.

I don't exactly know when a horse stops being green, but my gut says it's been within the last 12 months, when we finally figured out straightness and I started to get control of individual body parts.  The making of the horse has been a fun adventure, and one I could not have undertaken without my trainer!