Ok, so, Carolyn got a hold of a natural horsemanship trainer who agreed to come and work with her and Survi...and I jumped on the bandwagon as well. Socks had the training early in life and he could use some manners. So, we met with Bryan Martinez to let him meet us and the boys and see what he thought. Long story short, he "read" our horses easily and told us his training approach and even did some small stuff and we agreed this would be helpful to both horses. Bryan does the Parelli training so we had to learn the "7 games": friendly, porcupine, driving, yo- yo, circling, sideways and the squeeze game. Survi, being the sensitive one, was really good at most of the pressure games. Socks, not so much. He liked to try and test how far you really wanted him to go with the game. So frustrating! However, he did really well at the circling game and the sideways game for whatever reason. Maybe he remembered a thing or two. At any rate, we had 7 weeks for the 7 games and our horses actually starting to LEARN! GASP!!!! It was really great to see some things starting to click in their heads. Bryan is an amazing person with such a quiet disposition but when he got our horses, they definitely paid attention and did what he asked of them. Of course, Socks had to push the limit of sanity sometimes.....he would totally work harder than Bryan would ask but.......that's Socks for you. As our training went on, he "lost it" less and less. Survi was such a great little student. He was so sensitive that he picked things up very quickly with barely any aids to "remind" him of what he needed to do. For example, Carolyn really only has to wiggle her finger at him and he will back up...Socks still needs the rope swaying to remind him that he has to back up but he also needs less asking than he originally did. We just had our last lesson on the 10th of December. We figured we could work with the games and regroup early next year to continue and at least we have the basics to work with. It's been fun learning how to "talk" to our horses and watching them continuously do what we're asking of them is also fun and rewarding. I look forward to learning more and getting my horse to behave.......and watching Survi walk right on a trailer without flicking an ear at Carolyn! =)
