Funny story prompted by my friend Cynthia Cooper at Natural Horse World – her horses got a gate open this week, only she had a back up gate. I’ve categorized this as bragging, cos’ I ‘spose it is really.
I had some special friends staying over at our place with a horse mad three year old who was quite tall for her age. Derder der der derder der der… That’s the sound of “the shark’s coming” music from Jaws. Haven’t you ever wondered why people don’t pay attention to the spooky music and change what they’re doing?
Back to the subject and the spooky music. The kid was a delight with the horses, so early morning feeds, I invited invited her to come with me. Mum pops her out the front door in her coat and wellies while I’m going out the back door putting on my coat and wellies too.
Well… by the time I got from the back of the house to the front (with no getting sidetracked I promise – this was like two minutes maybe less!) this little bundle of joy had opened the gate to the horse paddock and the entire herd of 11 or 12 – can’t remember exactly – were disappearing out the front gate at a rapidly increasing yeehhaaa pace.
I’m yelling for Mum and for her to go back to her Mum – probably caused the poor kid trauma – as I’m roaring down the front driveway just in time to see that last couple of butts disappearing at a flat gallop, around a blind bend on a 100 km an hour road.
Mannn horses out on a high speed main road, this is the stuff of nightmares.
Well… I have a VERY loud voice, honed by years of calling the cows from up to a km away, making my voice boom and echo through the valleys and Bobby was a brilliantly trained liberty horse and by this time we’d written Bobby’s Diaries together and I was listening to him and we were (can you see my crossed fingers?) we were THIS close.
BOBBBBYYYYYY!!!!! I bellowed in my best cow voice to the disappearing butts.
The horsey guy in the car on the other side of the bend who was having a metaphorical heart attack at a whole herd of horses coming galloping towards him, described it to me later with a note of awe in his voice. “Never seen anything like it,” he said. “I was trying to figure out what the heck I could do” (it was a very winding road full of blind bends and did I say ONE HUNDRED kilometers an hour?) “then I heard you yell and the whole mob just wheeled around and went galloping back to you.”
That was Bobby’s influence because they weren’t all that good.
I put them into next doors driveway because I didn’t know where the little girl was and didn’t want to send a whole herd of galloping horses at her. Then led them by their manes and by my coat wrapped around their neck for some of them – with no resistance from any of them even though the energy was still high – led them through the small gate between the two properties and back into their paddock.
Then I put a padlock on the horse paddock, which is still kept padlocked to this day even on a different property. And I STILL – young Sara – still I tell the story of how a three year old gave me one of the biggest frights and biggest thrills of my life.
Today’s photo: Is of Bobby and I back in 1997, Bobby jumping the entire Nar Nar Goon Pony Club cross country jumping course at liberty with absolutely nothing on him at all. The big tree trunk you see in the photo here (the sticky outy bits are only on the end) a coffin jump, a water jump – stuff he’d never seen before in his life – just sailing over all of them at liberty like most horses wouldn’t even do in a halter and rope, just cause I asked him too and he could.
Moments after this jump I felt him energetically getting away from me – I was waayyy behind him by that point – so I called him back and he jumped this jump from the other direction and tucked back in to be with me.
And look at that lovely lifted up back on him…
If you want to have incredible fun at liberty too, why would you waste any more time finding out “how”? There’s some innovative liberty lessons in Fast Track that speed up getting your Feel for your horse happening, as well as a deeper bond and having an absolute ball at the same time. It’s in Aussie dollars which makes it gobsmacking value.
Here’s what else you get in Fast Track:
Leave a Reply