I Can Feel Every Pair of Hands

I sat on my little buckskin colt, Odin, early this morning. The sun had only been up for the last thirty minutes and the air was still sweet and cool.

Heavy gray cloud banks were already pushing over the mountains and the air was so humid I could taste it. Another rainy day was coming.

Satisfaction and a deep sense of joy made me sit quiet and soft on Odin's narrow little back. He stood relaxed and cheerful, chewing his bit in a contemplative way.

This morning I remembered why I love starting colts.

We had clicked.

After several frustrating rides he had just shown me he got it. He understood where I wanted his feet to go and he was putting them there. Not with the awkward stiffness I had wrestled with for over a week, but with a lovely flow and an easy response to my legs and hands.

He never pulled against my hands or stiffened his sides against me, he gave me every maneuver with a quiet confidence that thrilled me. The same shiver-down-my-spine thrill I have felt with every young horse I have ever started, on the day they stop working against me and start working for me.

Odin (formerly known as Leland) is the colt I began working with as an experiment that was a test of my own skill and the respect I have for the working of a horse's mind.

I have had complete control over how Odin has been handled since he was born. I was retiring as a professional trainer and had the luxury of time.

So I have trained him in a way I have long wanted to try.

The first thing I did was nothing. He stayed with his mother on pasture until he was eight months old. He lived in a herd with several babies his own age and ran and played and was disciplined by the mares around him.

I didn't halter break him or pet him. He learned about people by watching us care for the herd, seeing the mares nicker in greeting when we came out to feed. He watched his mother be haltered, saw her feet being trimmed, was there when I groomed her or doctored a cut.

If he came up to sniff me I would relax and let him taste the rough fabric of my Carhart or lick the salt off my arm, but I didn't try to pet him or catch him.

When it was time for his shots and worming we gathered him and the other foals into a pen and wrestled them down.

He learned I could catch him, hold him and let him go. He learned I was kind to his mother. He saw the respect I demanded from the other horses while I distributed feed.

When he was a yearling I brought him in with the other stud colts and kept them in a large pen. I had decided I would teach him each step only once. I would then progress to the next step and assume he understood the last lesson.

I began by moving him around the pen until he flicked an ear at me and then I quit.

The next day I moved him until he looked at me.

Then I worked him until he took a step towards me and so on.

He was halter broke in no time and seemed to understand that we were building something. then I turned him out again until he was three.

Fast forward until now.

He is well started under saddle, even though the last year has been very hit and miss with the time I could spend on him.

Odin could walk, trot, take his leads, stop and go left and right.

He was a little pluggy, a little sticky, but no more than any other youngster I have started. The amazing thing is, up until recently I never had to repeat anything.

He learned to tie, load, handle a trim, be saddled and ridden all by taking just one lesson for each step. I could leave him for two months, go catch him, saddle him, swing on and go for a ride without a flick of his ear.

I was working off the premise that a horse will remember a negative experience for the rest of his life. I saw no reason for a horse not to remember a step in training the same way.

I have recently entered the phase of having to build muscle memory. Repetition is the key to balance, reliability and instant response.

Still our progression was incredible, because Odin has become a thinking machine. He works hard to connect the previous ride to the next and in return I work hard to make each lesson be the next sensible progression.

The only drawback has been he has treated my riding him with kind of a bemused tolerance. He is a kindly little guy and saw no reason for argument but felt no need to give one ounce beyond my most basic request.

No one had ridden him except me and Kidlette. Since we are almost interchangeable as riders (except she is fast out pacing me) there was no reason not to let her crawl on when she felt like it.

When one of my favorite past students, a young woman who I trained from her first ride to her first World Show came to visit I let her ride him too.

When I became tied up in my own personal whirlwind I let the girls ride him without my being there.

"Guess what we did today Mom?" Kidlette asked me.


"What?" I answered.

"We took Odin on a trail ride. He was great, we let Beauhunk ride him."

"Say what?"

Beauhunk is the boyfriend of my old student. As far as I know he has absolutely no horse experience.

"Do you think that was a good idea?" I said.

" Everything went fine, Odin spooked once but it wasn't bad and Beauhunk didn't fall off."

I decided it was time to take back my colt.

When I went to get on I immediately felt a difference. Odin shifted towards me instead of away from me as I stood in the stirrup and walked off.

He had never moved out before I asked him to before.

When we went into the arena he was a mess. He stiffened his neck and stuck his head in the air at the simplest request. When I asked him to go left he would take his shoulder, flop his head and take off to the right. When I asked for a right turn he would sull up and stick in the ground.

When I asked him to lope he took off and ran to the arena fence, a bag of bone jarring, running through my hands, jello and rocks.

"Ahhhh shit."

We went to work. There was a lot of  head tossing, taking off, kicking at my heels and a big gaping mouth I had never seen before.

By the time we were done I was a sweaty, heaving, pissed off mess and so was Odin.

He had learned to evade, resist and refuse in a few short rides. I could tell he hadn't been abused or hurt, just ridden ineffectively. He was off kilter and rigid ad was acting like a spoiled teenager.

On the way home I was feeling just terrible. All those months of work down the tubes.

"Kidlette, no more greenies on my colt," I said over the phone."As a matter of fact, just you and me on him from here on out.'

"Uh oh, what happened?"

"I could feel every pair of hands that's been on his reins and it's like he's been taken over by aliens."

"OK, I'm sorry."

"Just because he's gentle doesn't mean he's broke."

"I know Mom, I wasn't thinking, I won't do it again."

"If you want to ride with your friends put them on your horse or Rosie."

"Mom, I get it."

"This is my colt."

"Mom!"

It became obvious I wasn't using the say it once and assume it's understood approach with my daughter. I was going with the beat the road kill with a big stick approach.

So I dug in and went to getting my colt back.

We had quite the battle over the next week. He picked a different fight each day and we went at it until I got at least one good response. I was getting pretty down, he was turning out to be a willful little booger.

Then a funny thing happened.

My shoer, Ed, came out to trim feet.

Odin was a total butthead. He spooked when Ed used fly spray on him. He sucked back, knocked over his stand and jerked his feet out of his hand. His ears were back and he had a decidedly muley look to him.

He's never raised a fuss with Ed before.

When I rode him the next day he still had a sour, nasty look on his face, but he stood for his fly spray and behaved better in the arena. As soon as I got an ounce of try I quit for the day.

Yesterday was about the same, he had this pent up nasty look on his face and was slow and pokey. Again, when I got the least amount of try I quit.

Don't think I was all sweetness and patience, there was quite a bit of tussling, whacking and pulling, but it was pretty mild compared to some.

Then today he greeted me with a soft nicker.

When I was saddling Madonna he put his nose on my neck and whiffled my hair. I turned around and he very gently put his forehead on my chest.

And then, in the arena, we had our moment. He was sweet, responsive and better than ever before. It was like my hands were the only ones he had ever known and he was soft as a feather. He was better than he was before the incident with Beauhunk.

I think that moment, that click, is one of the finest feelings in the world. I have sworn Odin would be my last colt. But I found myself thinking, maybe I'll have time for just one more.