There’s nothing I like better.

There’s nothing I like better than horsing around surrounded by big grins and smiley faces and I’ve spent quite a few years doing just that. At the moment we’re enjoying our own version of this within our circle of family and friends.

Whilst I am having a spell from the official regular rides, Brandy is also having a spell out in the paddock showing them all how a real horse, a brumby does it.

I learned much from Carlos

The main hick-ups Brandy and I encountered in her training were the lack of ‘quality’ time I was able to spend with her and me occasionally misunderstanding brumby language, being more familiar with the average horsey language.

I learned much from Carlos Tabernaberri in this respect and he put my mind at ease with regards to the charging which Brandy would get into on a couple of occasions during early training sessions. Real street fighters they are, he told me for instance and that explained a few things away.

It had been hard to reconcile Brandy’s soft and gentle nature with those few instances, but basically brumbies don’t muck around. Carlos and I agree that brumbies are so personable and really interact and are engaged. Overall they also tend to be very friendly horses to those whom they trust. The people which I’ve spoken to that know and have worked with brumbies agree that if it were a possible choice we’d only work with brumbies. Best horses ever.

Carlos is coming over again for another visit to the Fraser Coast, not sure if there’s any spaces left for his workshop.

Carlos Tabernaberri is from www.whisperingacres.com.au

Does Brandy still want to be an RDA horse?

Time will tell. At one stage during her training I considered her to be a perfect EFL horse because of her sweet and gentle nature and her responsiveness to the people around her. She is just so eager to please.

I can’t remember if I mentioned Equine Facilitated Learning before but I did a great workshop about a year ago with Franklin from www.wayofthehorse.org and have come to appreciate how people learn and progress through their interaction with horses.

What I like about the discipline of EFL particularly is that people don’t have to ride a horse to benefit from the interaction. This makes equine therapy available to anyone, not just people with a desire or ability to ride a horse.

Through the desensitisation process I went through with Brandy I noticed how alert and receptive she was and I was getting close to introducing her to my rider friends at the RDA. The plan was to utilise the EFL training with Brandy and this way slowly incorporate her into the program. I had noticed how much the riders enjoyed to handle the horses on the ground and not only be involved with riding them.

Brandy would be perfect in that regard because she is so pure if you like, un-spoilt with her responses real and as yet not tainted by bad habits or too much or handling of inexperienced hands.

What about Brandy the wannabe?

Exactly right. Now what? Brandy has been put out with the herd for a little while and due to access issues such as overgrown acres of mushy paddock over the last few months, she has pretty much gone brumby again.

Reshuffling

As well as Brandy all the children at the Riding for the Disabled were a priority in my life. There’s been a little reshuffling in that the RDA centre is no more. At the moment there’s still a bunch of parents left organizing rides for their kids every now and then, but, despite them continuing to carry the same name, the centre is no longer affiliated with Riding for the Disabled Australia.

As a registered coach with Riding for the Disabled Australia I decided that it is a good idea to stick with national protocols, policies and procedures when working with children, people with disabilities and horses and as such chose not to be associated with the the local centre any longer.

It has caused me a lot of heartache because I love all the riders and cherished the time we spent horsing around but when dealing with horses and children, it’s safety first.  

Time Management and training?

Truth be known there’s been a lot going on at the RDA centre which absorbed a great amount of my time and Brandy really has been on the backburner. This wasn’t the plan from the beginning but I found myself in a position where I had to sort through an awful lot of priorities all at once. In the end obviously, people are always on top of my list.

My time management and haphazard training with Brandy, if you can even call it that,  just reflects a rather chaotic period of time I was going through.

Now I’ve done it. My credentials are being questioned. Some one said, What makes you think that you can break in a horse? Well, actually I never really thought about it since I’d been riding horses from the age three, as far as I was concerned, there’s no breaking in required. Just a getting on.


I was galloping around the paddock at age three. Well allright maybe it wasn’t me but the horse I was on. And maybe the 19 hh Clydesdale xx police horse wasn’t quite galloping around the paddock with me on it’s back, but he sure made me look and feel competent.


He made all the right moves and taught me how to be a accomplished rider long before my feet ever reached any stirrups. Of course I’m still a work in progress and always will be but my first equine friend Alex taught me much.


Apart from the incident where he gobbled down Mum’s David Jones summer sale straw hat, all rides with Alex were flawless and cemented my friendship with all things equine.


After we moved to acreage my days were filled with building my own version of Hogsmeade and incorporating my herd of wild friends in this village. In turn my friends welcomed me into the herd as one of theirs and I didn’t realise for a long time that most people use saddles and bridles to ride their horses. We had a lot of fun.


After a few incidents (not all horse related), I decided on a sabbatical from riding which is the best thing I’ve ever done. Because enjoyable as riding a horse is, it doesn’t necessarily teach us much about horsemanship or equine behaviour. Riding a horse is all about how you control your horse’s movements. It’s hanging out with horses which teaches me every day how much I still have to learn and how little I know about equine behaviour. It is very humbling.


As a child it all came naturally and now it’s about putting into practice what came natural early on in life. I discovered a few things in the process of learning alongside Brandy and one is that I’m not as elastic as I used to be as a child. The second thing I learned is that brumbies are not all the same as domestic horses. This child which was playing with and riding unbroken horses which were bred in captivity is light years removed from the person I am today who is attempting to break in a brumby by spending a few moments with her every now and then. Even though my childhood years are only a decade and a bit in the past, my behaviour and time management doesn’t compare.


As a child I breathed horses day and night. Now between all my commitments if, apart from feeding times, I manage to spend a few moments with Brandy every few weeks it’s a lot.


Brandy is eager and willing and I’ve been just, well you know, busy. I haven’t prioritised my time with her, expecting to slot into that ‘natural mode’ of my childhood years. Which of course would happen if I were to spend the time, but a few moments here and there are never going to cut it.


As a child some of my best buddies were equine champs who were bought up by Arabs after their wins. In my teens I galloped alongside an ex cop as we scaled the hills around Belli Park area. I exercised horses for an endurance rider and a riders western competition horses and fell in love with Friesians and Gypsy Vanners. I had the good fortune to be taught by wonderful teachers on the Sunshine Coast. On the Fraser Coast I was trained as a coach for disabled riders. The beaming faces and large grins during riding lessons is the best return for all the time put in with my four legged friends.


So am I qualified to break in a horse? If you were to ask my old friends they’d probably say, Breaking, what breaking? We were just horsing around. 

With Brandy however .. I’ve let her down big time. How to redeem myself?