Sam's First Time

Sam did so well at his lesson on 7/23. The challenge Sam is competing in allows us to have a limited number of training sessions(with a professional) so that we can make sure he has a solid foundation. The trainer who gave the lesson has worked with several other once feral horses and worked amazingly well with Sam. Sam was not fearful, just reasonably hesitant.

The trainer has a few steps for starting a new horse: accepting a human,then a saddle, and finally passenger. Sam accomplished the first two of these in just over an hour. In this lesson we realized that Sam can do and learn so much faster than we are giving him new information. For the next week, Sam will practice accepting a human and accepting a saddle, while still keeping up on his ground work activities.At the next lesson, Sam's trainer may attempt to mount him after evaluating Sam's progress and preparedness
Sam did well trailering and loading on the way to the lesson, but when we arrived and unloaded he got a bit nervous, but not too bad. Sam got pushy like he does when he gets nervous; that was the first part of his lesson, not to be pushy. Next the trainer rubbed him all over, which he was perfectly good with, thanks to his previous foster home. The trainer did a few other similar exercises, then he jumped onto Sam's back and using a couple special techniques, and sat on Sam. It as amazing, and Sam took it so well. He just sat, so Sam would be like "okay, whatever." Sam only had reasonable reactions to each of these steps, he did not run off, even though he did try to leave a few times. After this, the trainer worked with the other horse/rider combinations, and we worked with Sam on all the new stuff that had just been introduced to us.

Just sittin' on Sam, no saddle

I have a few pictures from this.

Sam watching all the action

Sam's next challenge was accepting the saddle, which we had already begun work with. Sam was already accepting the bareback pad and its girth. Sam need to accept the pad that was going to be under the saddle first and did, that was not a problem. The first time the trainer threw the pad on instead of placing it on him, Sam got a bit nervous, but every other time was acceptable. After just a couple of minutes, Viola! Sam was wearing a saddle. Sam allowed  the girth to be tightened, both front and back. As soon as Sam was asked to move, Sam looked as though he belonged in a saddled bronc show. After just a couple minutes of this, Sam allowed us to catch him again, with relative ease. Then, when he was sent out on the line, he bucked a few more times and settled down a bit.

 Sam, you were SO amazing at your first lesson with the trainer! Thank you for being so AWESOME!