Day Fifteen: I had a young girl come and look at one of my rooms for rent, she had also started colts for some other trainers I know and so I used Happy to go through how I get them started. I took him out to the round pen and went through some of the things I want to get done before climbing on. I do things much differently now that I'm older. I could tell she was thinking just get on him already. lol when I was her age I would get on everything in three days. Some had really long days to get them to that point. Now I want to teach there mind and not just tire out thier body. I keep it simple and hopefully they keep moving forward a little each day. I have found they hold onto the things I teach them better with only a few things to learn a day and I also need the training to fit into a training time slot. Each horse has a training time slot, if he progresses in that time slot he is a good one, if he does not it is the owner of the horse who needs to rethink how much they want this horse trained.
I lung Happy until he will change direction and walk off the other way relaxed, about fifteen minutes. I stand next to Happy as we are talking, I have my arm over his back and I lean my body on his, he flinches every time I would move. I jump up and down in place with my hands on his back, he would leap away each time, I try to stay with him still jumping. I kept doing this until he will stand and then I walk forward, lead him around the pen for a bit and then do it all again until he will stand when I start to jump. He finally lowered his head, ears out to the side and tried to take a cat nap as I am long winded. This was the first time he had done that, hanging out with him talking was a good lesson for the day so I put him away.