The Novice Horseman Blog

I’ve been referring to my first horse in several posts.  Let me introduce you to Juniper Moon Wind, affectionately called Iggette.  If you’ve read my posts on what & what not to look for, this is a very good lesson in what NOT to do for your first horse.  Iggette, in her younger days, was an absolute nightmare for any novice.  I will add that in time with a lot of patience & training, she became the best horse ever for both me and the countless students that she taught how to ride and overcome their fears.

Iggette is a race bred Quarter horse.  In 1979, she was in training at a smaller track in my area.  She had about 60 or 90 days of training.  To be quite honest, I just don’t remember anymore.  As with a lot of young race horses, her legs just couldn’t stand up to the strain of hard training.  Before she ever had an official race, she hurt her front legs.  This wasn’t a life threatening injury, but it did end her race career.  The only good therapy was complete rest.

Iggette was taken off the track to recover at her owner’s home.  She was put in a pasture with feeder cows.  Unfortunately for Iggette, she has a lot more cow sense in her that a race horse should have.  She herded the cows around the pen, cut them into corners and wouldn’t let eat.  She did this several times a day.  Let’s just say she wouldn’t let the cows fatten up and a skinny cow is not what you want to take to the butcher.  To top this off, Iggette bucked off the owner’s wife when she was ridden.  Remember Iggette only had race training, she didn’t know how to be a pleasure riding horse.  This just added insult to injury.  It was time to sell her.

This is where I come in.  I had never owned a horse, I had never taken care of a horse and I had only ridden a few backyard pets that my friends had.  I was a stupid 20 something and was just as horse crazy then as when I was at 4.  Oh yeah, I was also recuperating from a very bad fall off a lesson horse trying to learn how to jump fences.  I was told Iggette was going to the sale barn and I just couldn’t let that happen.  I talked my husband into buying her.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with her, but I knew I couldn’t let her go to the sale where she might end up in the hands of the killers.  I bought her without even going to look at her first.  This is how I became a novice owner.

When I went to get her, her former owner had offered to trailer her for me since I had neither a truck or trailer.  Being off the track, I thought she would just jump in the trailer & off we’d go.  We tried loading her the normal way by just walking into the trailer, she won that battle.  We tried a rope around her backside to try to pull her in, she won that battle.  We tried backing the trailer in the ditch so she wouldn’t have very far to step up, she won that battle.  We finally had to put her in a stall and back the trailer up to the door.  After an hour of trying to coax her in, we won – sort of.  She did get in the trailer, but she did the 4-foot shuffle all the way to her new home.  Whew, was I glad that was over.

Iggette’s new home was a stable not far from my house.  I did the good owner thing and walked her around the pasture so that she would know the fenceline.  Just as I took off her halter, a jet flew overhead as it was taking off from the airport.  The airport was less than a 1/4 mile from the stable.  Needless to say it was low and loud.  Iggette reared up at the sound of very loud jet engines & took off running.  She had never heard this sound before & it scared the daylights out of her.  I couldn’t catch her the rest of the day.  Within a week, jets didn’t phase her anymore.  Catching her while in the pasture remained one of her biggest vices for quite a few years though.

As for riding her, I quickly learned race training is just what it implies.  The only gaits she knew how to do were a fidgety walk and run at top speed.  I needed help and decided to use the resident manager/trainer.  This was another big mistake.  ALWAYS - ALWAYS - ALWAYS check out the trainer before hand.  Talk with some of their customers, watch a few of their training sessions and talk with other people in their barn.  If the trainer discourages or flat out won’t let you talk to their clients or watch them train, pass them up.  Don’t even think about it.  After finding out a few of his “training techniques”, I knew this was definitely not the trainer for me or my new horse.

I suffered through trying to train her myself or maybe it was Iggette who suffered through a complete novice trying to train a green horse.  We didn’t get very far.  Since I had no idea of what I was doing, the best I could manage was a somewhat slower walk and a trot that would jar your teeth out.  I didn’t try to lope at this point.  To be quite honest, I was intimidated and she knew it.  She never tried to dump me or rub me off on the nearest fence, but she was never willing to give to in to me either.  She seemed to do better with women than with men.  My husband would ride her and she would do little bunny hops sideways.

So to sum up this part of my novice experience:
I bought a 3 yr old horse.
I bought a horse off the racetrack.
I bought a horse that only had race training and no other type of training.
I bought a horse I had never even seen.
I bought a horse from sheer emotion.
I bought a horse that at times was almost impossible to catch.
I bought a horse that would not load in a trailer.

How many more wrong things can a person do?

You can see now why I am passionate about helping other novice horsemen out there.  It can be mighty painful without some experienced help.

I just received my Horse & Rider magazine.  This is just one of my magazines that I read front to back.  There is an article in this issue that you, as a novice looking to buy a horse, MUST read!!  The article is “7 SIGNS YOU SHOULD WALK AWAY FROM A HORSE FOR SALE (OR SELLER)” by Bob Avila.

This article tells you what bad habits to look for.  The article goes into bad attitude, this would be cranky, rude or impatient.  It tells you about being barn sour and also about not respecting your space.  There is a small section of information about lameness.  There are also signs to look for in the seller.  This article is only 4 pages long, but it does give you information that you will need when you go to look for that dream horse.  READ IT!! & READ IT again!!

And when you are done with this article, read the one from Clinton Anderson on getting your foot shy horse  to let you handle those ticklish feet.  Oh and don’t miss YOUR HORSE YOUR LIFE for a few pointers.  There are some really good common sense things a novice horse owner may not know.  There are also on going articles on conformation, riding & horsemanship.  AND THIS IS JUST 1 ISSUE!!!

If you don’t have this magazine . . .  go out now & get it at your local bookstore, drug store or grocery store.  It is well worth your time and effort for this one.  This is just one MUST HAVE magazine for any novice.  It is just full of information.  There is also EQUUS.  I highly recommend this magazine for the latest in  horse health.  Practical Horseman & Dressage Today are outstanding magazines for the owner who leans more towards English riding.

These are the magazines that I subscribe to for the latest information in health, riding and horse related products.  Over the years, I have gotten an enormous amount of information from these magazines.  There have been articles on legislations that effect the horse world.  There have been articles on which hay may be better for your horse, oats vs sweet feed and which plants in your pasture are deadly to your horse.

If you don’t have a subscription for any of these, check out the MUST HAVE MAGAZINES in the right column of my blog.  Just click on the magazine that you would like to subscribe to.

Subscribe today, don’t miss another issue!

Have you done your homework?  Have you figured out your budget?  I truly hope you didn’t skip that assignment.  You are finding out that even if you have your own place, owning a horse is NOT CHEAP!  It’s better to find out the cost of horse ownership on the front end of this process.  You don’t want to find out in a couple of months that you have to sell your dream horse because you under estimated the cost of upkeep.  It is far more important for you to make your mortgage payment and feed your family. 

If you’ve found that your finances are in order and you can afford the maintenance of a horse, you are going to ask what horse is best for me?  For a novice owner, there are sooo many choices.  There are also some that you should steer away from for now.  I’m going to break this down into several posts.  This way I don’t have to try to condense the information too much.

In my Jan 9 2008 post, I suggested a mature horse.  By this I mean a horse that is an 8-15 year old, I would even go as far as a 20 year old for the right horse.  Why?  Because these guys have been around a bit.  They probably have years of training/riding and unless they are the nervous type, they are well out of that fidgety young horse mentality.  Beside this, there are a few other manners that they probably have learned with age.  They should have good ground manners, they have probably learned not to lean on the farrier, and they shouldn’t try to hurt the vet at shot time.  If the horse has been shown or was a ranch horse, it will probably load in a trailer easily.  I absolutely can’t emphasize enough just how much that is worth.

You want to find a horse that has a kind soft eye, not one that only shows the whites and has that wild scared look all of time.  You want a horse that stands quietly no matter if it is tied to a fence, on crossties or tied to your trailer.  You want a horse that respects you, your space and your authority.  You don’t need a horse that strikes at you, tries to walk over you, or challenges your leadership.  You want a horse that is reasonably trained.  While it doesn’t have to be a "push button" horse, it should be a well broke horse.  You want a horse that is healthy in both body & mind.  You and the horse should have mutual trust for each.  Without trust, you will never develop a rewarding relationship, you will never become a team.

Where do you find a horse like this?  Like in the post mentioned above, your riding instructor may know of a prospect.  Try your horse friends.  They may know a youth or amateur who has outgrown their current horse and is looking for more of a challenge.  Horse shows, especially the big breed shows, always have horses for sale.  Use caution here though.  You may find a good prospect.  But if the owner is from out of town, they may want to sell while at the show.  This could make it more difficult to test ride the horse a couple of times.  It would also make it very hard to get a pre-purchase exam (I’ll discuss this more later).  Working ranches will also have dispersal sales.  This would be a good place to pick a nice ranch horse.  This is also an instance where you need to be careful and taking a knowledgeable horse person with you would be best.  They could help steer you away from a horse that may not be right for you.  There are the classified ads in both the paper and on the internet.  And finally, there are the bulletin boards at feed stores, tack stores and livestock sales.

Remember what I said about being in too much of a hurry.  You don’t want your dream horse to turn out to be your worst nightmare.