So you are thinking of getting a young horse?

This old photo is the very first horse that I broke in and started myself. Of course I had help from my mum and dad, but she was my first young horse. Her name was Pie and I just LOVED her. She did throw me off early on, but apparently you have to fall of 99 times to be a good rider.

So you are thinking of getting a young horse?

Words and photos by Sally Kirkwood

So you are thinking of getting a young horse. Think of this as a little young horse pre-purchase advice to guide and enlighten you on the journey that is ‘the young horse’.

Now before I begin, please don’t think these are some fancy words like zee Europeans, with their super fancy trotting machines, and all the wisdom of keeping zee horse in front of zee leg, blah blah blah. Nope this is a keeping it real tale of young horse expectations, no matter the breed. It is some of the good, the bad and the ugly to help you with your judgement. Are you really ready for a young horse?

I often have people tell me they are going to purchase a young fancy pony, as they like my young fancy pony and they would like one the same. I will always reply with, “You know it is a dead-set first-prized village idiot, don’t you?” What you see isn’t always what you get and we have some very exciting moments, which leads to many hours of work. I will politely point out that with our busy lives we sometimes don’t have the luxury of time to deal with village idiots and more than that, some young horse challenges require a fair amount of guts, determination and bravery. I know there are lots of fabulous tools and training help out there to guide you on your way, but at the end of the day, you still have to saddle up and tackle some young horse moments head on and some of these moments can turn into a battle ground that sometimes resembles a toddler having a melt down in the lolly isle of the supermarket. Not just any old melt down, a fully blown on the ground kicking and screaming, ‘I hate you’ code red melt down. You can read every parenting book in the world and none of them have prepared you for this.

This young race horse needed a total attitude readjustment. So she was lucky enough to do a days mustering!

Just like your journey into parenthood, young horse parenting can be similar. You have done the ground work, you have read the books, you have been to the clinics, you have the appropriate training tools at the ready, but sometimes there are curve balls that they didn’t prepare you for and at the end of the day it comes down to the amount of GRRRRRR you have in your belly. Now I am not saying that you need to be cruel, even though at times you may secretly want to beat the living daylights out of them. No, it is a matter of helping them make wise choices in life. They can choose to do things the easy way, which is your way and you make it fun and inviting, or they can cross over to the dark side where you have to make them move their feet and work hard so they can hopefully see the light.

Let me enlighten you on some of these challenging young horse moments you may face, as I have tackled these little challenges head on myself.

The most obvious one is the pigrooting, or in the worst cases, bucking. Some horses give you enough warning signs to indicate that all hell is about to break loose. Those ones aren’t so bad as you are more than prepared. It is the sneaky ones who lull you into a false sense of security and all sweet-as-pie just tritty-trotting around and next minute… BOOM COP A BIT OF THIS. You go from doo doo doo da doo, to whoooooooooo you mongrel, while holding on for dear life and trying to pluck its head up and screw it around while trying to get some control back.

We then have the horses that aren’t so brave and wear their cowardliness on their sleeves. These poor scared critters like to express their scaredy cat ways such as, “Oh I am a little unsure I think I will snort and have a quizzical look”. Mostly these horses need a little reassurance and are happy to go back to the job at hand. The ones that throw you a real curve ball are the ones that not just shy, but shy, suck back at a rate of knots and take off sideways all in one fluid movement that may cause whip lash. There are many items that can cause your horse to have heart failure – ground pigeons are an example. However there are many common everyday things that we didn’t know were life threatening to our equine pals – puddles of water, plastic bags, small ponies or even the rubber mat that they walk over four times every single day. And there’s always the one that sneaks up to surprise them – the shadow of death. Sometimes it is their own shadow and sometimes it is from a passing bird. Bird shadows can create a mild heart attack and a two-metre leap in the air, followed by striking the shadow with front feet and finishing it off by trampling it to death with all four feet at once. Then the move is finished by taking off in fright with an added kick out for good measure.

This is the mat of death.

There’s also the young horse with not much work ethic, which needs to be encouraged to go forward and trot. Some think that trotting is way over rated – “Can I just canter please?” Sometimes they take on “you can’t make me trot” as a challenge and some of the battles are epic. Trot avoidance might go as far as the creation of a new signature move such as “the dolphin” – frolicking in and out of the waves using their best dolphin canter.

Or the opposite, the youngster that has too much energy and is an over achiever in their paces, tempo and ticking brains.

Or there are the gold fish brains, who can’t retain what they learnt the day before and you have to keep revisiting the basics.

And there’s the young horse that is perfect in all of his work and hasn’t had a single bad day – ohhhhhhhhh how they trick you! No one has all perfect days. We all have a bad day along the line and horses are no exception. When one of my favourite young horses went nearly a year with no hiccups or dramas, I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. Little did I know that he had a bad day savings account. You know – save them up for a rainy day? This particular squirrel had stashed lots of nuts and had a PARTY with his savings and let me have it for weeks on end. Ohhhhhh the epic battles and the hours in the saddle saw many tears and even caused “The Trainer” to bring beer to the arena.

Or how could I forget – the young flashy pony who over night decided that he would no longer go to the right! Seriously! He would walk, trot and canter to the left like the fanciest super star but this particular day he decided that he was only a left hand model. As soon as we turned right he would stop and back up. When I say back up, I mean back two laps of my arena no matter how much you kicked and flapped your legs whilst throwing away the reins.

The water trough of terror. Legend has it that many horses have lost their lives to the monster that resides in the trough. Who knew?

I often ask the horse gods, if the horse fairy visits the young horses and whispers little tricks for them to try on us for funnies?

It is moments like these and many more that us riders need a fire in our bellies. Put a bit of gravel in your sandwich or a teaspoon of cement in your coffee to harden up and deal with our pony pals when they choose to join the village idiots.

Here are some of my little tips and tricks that I use to get me in the zone to deal with such moments.

One of my favourites is singing and playing music. Not a love song or anything you hear at the kids’ eisteddfod! You need something with a beat, base and motivating words. I have often threatened to make a young horse, village idiot, motivational play list. It would definitely feature, Eminem, ACDC and Pink. For those days when you know you need to pump yourself up before you even mount up, you must strut into that stable picturing some cool pyrotechnics and back up dancers and you are the star of the show. Don’t be afraid to even bust some bad ass dance moves and rap riffs in front of that horse so he knows that you mean business and that you also have some sick dance moves. I will often make up the verses or add in some meaningful words to help encourage me to face the young horse challenges that lay in front of me.

Another good one is to recite a bit of poetry. In these moments I like to be my own little poet and whip up a few good verses to make sure my young horse knows he is on notice.

I once had a friend,
Who liked to go crabbin on a weekend.
He had no bait for his pots.
I told him,
come to my stables, I have lots!
Young horse meat works a treat,
and makes your crabs taste really sweet.

The third option is one that I am well know for and even have students call me in their time of need, for a BIG HAIRY BALLS TALK! I have developed a velcro set of testicles that you simply place on when you need that extra grunt to get through your young horse moment. They are also very handy if your nerves are at a high level before a competition. Before you get on your high horse and tell me that we don’t need balls as women can do what men can do, I am not saying for one second that nutless riders are less riders. Hell I would like to think that I can out-ride most of our nutted friends. It is more of a motivational GGRRRRRR talk, “You have got a big set of hairy testicles and you are going to ride that mongrel like you stole it”. Not only does this talk give you a bit of “YEAH I CAN”, it also gives you an “OMG where does a squirrel put his nuts while riding?” realisation. This helps take some of the nerves away from the issue at hand because we are now all thinking, yeah where does the squirrel put his nuts? Then we have a bit of a laugh and before you know it you are lapping that young horse around like a true champion. Then you simply un-velcro, air them out and put them away until you need them again.

All of that said, there is nothing more rewarding than training your own young horse. Along the way, you also learn many training tips and tools that you keep in your tool bag to help you along your training journey or even for your next horse. There is no better way to learn than by rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard yards to achieve your goals. It doesn’t matter if it is a dressage horse, race horse, mustering horse or show jumper, you will reach many milestones in your journey and there is no greater feeling of pride to be able to say “I did that”.

I have never had a schoolmaster or going horse and have always started them as youngsters. People often ask me who trained Furstinus and I take great pride in saying it was me. If we all bought boring schoolmasters, how would we learn how to deal with shadows and watery puddles of death?

At the end of the day, we ride because we love horses and the joy that it gives us. It doesn’t matter if it is a schoolmaster, young horse or a donkey, the most important part is that you get to enjoy your ride. Please choose the horse that is right for you and your situation. Because my friends – life is way too short to ride horses you don’t enjoy.

Til next time…
May your music be pumping,
poetry romantic,
young horses well behaved,
and your hairy balls ready!