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Today we are going to see a horse trainer, so called Horse Whisperer, Evan Howarth. We are going to Lynn's place where she has a really good round pen. Evan has worked as a cowboy, rounding up cattle for years, he does that still all week on his ranch, and at weekends trains horses.
When we got there I was introduced to Evan, as you can see from the picture he is a traditional cowboy. Evan worked first with Bonnie who he said was "on the edge of turning bad, although she didn't want to". He did a lot of ground work with her, to gain both her respect and ensure they were on the same wave length. He then got Lynn's son to get on board, Sean is a very experianced rider and knows how to sit a good buck. He was being lead round by Evan who was on horseback aswell. Lynn decribed Evan as 'being allergic to walking' he rarly works on foot unless he has to. Bonnie was well behaved, and Evan used a flag and waved it around to get her to go forward, then he gave that to Sean to use whilst onboard to change her direction. I was then called in to get on, she was very well behaved to begin with, as soon as Evan waved the flag to get her to go to a trot she BUCKED! (apparently it was pretty big!) which i managed to stay on this time, because i had a saddle that fitted and stirrups that were the right length, plus he had two bits of rope on the saddle which he called "Holy Sh*t handles!". he then cut her off before she had chance to carry on bucking. Once she had got that out of her system we did some more things with her, asking her to change direction using the flag and stop, by "stopping riding", all of this was done without a bridle just a halter. After that he hobbled the horses (leather handcuffs for their front legs, pretty much), Bonnie wasn't too happy with this and once she realised that she had to stand still she was fine. We had lunch, which was burgers and a bean stew which had a multitude of other things in which was very nice. After lunch we moved on to Betty, The first things Evan said was "she hasn't got a bad bone in her body" and "wow, what a great looking Quarterhorse" Another guy turned up called Egor who was a doctor who rides and competes at roping. He was very impressed with Betty. Evan did some more work with Betty, running her round the round pen, and forming a relationship with her. Betty was very easy, and calm with it all, He got me to get on and we did some more work with the flag and rainging her round using both a halter fisrt then a bridle. She responded brilliantly, if anything a little bit lazy, which wasfine for me considdering my back was still a little sore from earlier on in the week. I trotted and Loped (cantered) her round the round pen no problem which was good. and then we went off into the larger riding arena and did some more work their, Evan was on his horse and we rode round the arena whilst Sean set up a bridge, which was a pallet that had no holes on, for us to walk across, Evan went first and then i followed, the first few attempts were pretty good, she wasn't to keen on the idea but third time lucky she was fine, and didn't seem to care walking across it. I was very happy, as I had achieved allot in the day, I was definately more confident about Betty to ride, but was still unsure about Bonnie, due to my inexperiance with young, barely broke horses. We stodd about talking for about an hour and had a beer. Then we got back, it was around 8pm when we got back and then Rick, Lynn's partner dropped the horses back in their big heartland (aluminium) trailer that was towed by Rick's Semi (like the front of a big lorry), that he had built for this task. After chatting with Rick for a while, we got in, watch a bit of TV and for some strange reason I just seemed to be full of energy and wasn't tired, then around 1am I finally retired.
A really eye opening day!
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