I appreciate that working with Shah is not an easy job and I admire Sue for her patience and knowledge of working through our issues. Being an older rescue horse, Shah came with a lot of bad history and I had no idea what I let myself in for but I knew natural horsemanship would give me the tools I needed to work with him on his level and help me understand his negative and aggressive behaviour.
Sue was excellent from t
he start, helping me work on his behaviour thoroughly from the ground before we progressed with our ridden work. She was never scared of Shah's tantrums, rearing, biting and barging - as opposed to me! She helped me grow my confidence in working with him as well as showing me how to become a better leader.
Over a period of several months we worked through most of his negative behaviour on the ground. Unfortunately he has very deep scars and will never be the 'perfect horse' but I'm very pleased to say that all the old negative baggage has now gone and I feel confident enough to handle him in all situations.
I feel that I must also add a tremendous thank to Sue for also helping us tackle our hacking out issues. My goal was to start Shah in endurance (he's a pure bred arab with several sons and daughters already doing well in endurance so I guessed he'd love it too) but at the time I couldn't hack out more than 200 yards down the lane on our own. He hacked out beautifully with other horses but was a terrible napper, reversing and spinning faster than I could often react. As a lot of my hacking is down lanes with traffic, a nappy horse is not a safe horse and I had run out of options for overcoming napping (tried all the old tricks, including some recommended by other NH teachers, but none worked.).
Sue came and did 'hacking out lessons' with us, walking further and further behind us with a running commentary of what I needed to do every time he napped or misbehaved. Guess what, it worked! From being able to do only a few hundred yards I went to being able to train him to get endurance fit for shorter distances and complete enough endurance rides to qualify us to open level - we're not even novices anymore!! We're now upping the training to see how we get on with middle distances (65-80km) and faster speeds, something I couldn't even dream about doing only a year and a half ago.
I must admit that I can still hear her voice in my head every time we face a similar situation, which is a good thing because his naps and tantrums still happen, but I can manage them successfully now - well, nearly all the time, no-one is perfect and hey, it's a left brain Arab I'm working with and they're such intelligent creatures!
Tabita and Shah (aka Voyajer), Sussex