At some stage we thought that three months was not an unrealistic goal to be able to throw the saddle on and go for a ride on our brumby.
After three weeks I actually managed to test out all kinds of different saddles on her and she had no problem with any of this. We walked around the paddock together with the stirrups dangling on her sides, no problem.
How come that after five months I feel that I’m going backwards instead of forwards?
Brandy has been fine with Sam our dog whenever he walks with me tidying up the yard. Unexpectedly the other day Brandy decided to have a closer-up look at this tiny Dane sized ‘horse’. Which kind of unnerved both Sam and I because for Brandy closer-up is really quite in your face, and she’s not small.
Sam has a quirky habit of jumping up with all fours at once when he plays with Baileys. Sam’s playful leaps clip Baileys’ ears or ruffle his mane, which our little stallion takes in the good humour as it is intended. I wasn’t so sure how Brandy would respond to a dog hurdling himself up at her throat with a grin the size of a Dane.
Sam wasn’t either so he decided against it. Pfewie. My heart rate slowly returned back to normal over the course of the rest of the morning. Later in the afternoon Sam must have thought, you started it, when he leaped through the electric fence to go and have a closer-up himself. Or so he thought.
Before he could even think, I go and have meself a little sniff of Brandy, she was onto him. Baby, was she onto him. That dog rocketed back so fast that I never even saw him move from A to B. One moment he was heading up towards Brandy, the next moment he’s safely panting his little heart out right next to me on the other side of the fence.
Brandy’s frolics managed to half heartedly tempt him to get back in but in the end we all sat back and watch Brandy run it off.
She doesn’t mind charging either, our brumby. In a closed up paddock with nowhere to go, in the end she just goes for it; thumping hoofs, bristling manes, smoking nostrils, the works.
I like.
Over the last few weeks the most progress I’ve made is due to my very deliberate ignoring of Brandy. This has resulted in her following me wherever I go, pleading for my attention.
Terry’s long pep talk the other night really boosted my confidence and put a lot of things in perspective. In hindsight a lot of things have become much clearer. It really makes all the difference to talk to some one who has experience with and understands brumbies. Their body language is so much more subtle than domesticated horses. Annie also managed to make me see the whole ‘breaking-in’ from a fresh perspective. She mentioned the infinite patience which Terry seems to be able to apply and how different personalities deal with the horses differently.
Just exchanging our (mainly mine) frustrations and little victories (mainly his) relaxed me enough to come up with a few fresh angles and approaches to work with within the next few weeks.
Next week it’ll be five months. Brandy and Baileys are getting friendlier every day. He has become her refuge when all the ‘baddies’ are out to get her. Such as the motorbikes. We barely hear the punk kids passing on their bikes every now and then a few streets away. For Brandy however this is a RED ALERT which makes her kick, buck and gallop around the paddock till she finds her refuge Baileys. We figure that she may have had a few run-ins with bikies in her wilder years out in the Toolara Forest.
In the end it is all about exposure. Every single time she is exposed to a what-she-thinks-to-be life threatening event, she does what all decent flight animals do. And that is, run for her life. However, every single time this perceived life-threatening-event turns out to be OK-ish, her reaction gets tempered a little bit.
This is becoming more and more obvious. Not from day to day but thinking back over the four and a half months there’s been massive progress. I read somewhere that Richard Maxwell found that a horse needs to be exposed over a hundred times to the same ‘threat’ before this becomes normal to them.
