Trying to Train a Spirited Horse as a Teenager…

I am on a mission to train my own horse at a very young age, only I'm finding out that my horse is a little spirited and I'm learning just how hard it can really be to train a horse from the ground up. Two years ago, I bought a young horse and named her Maggie. I've done quite a bit of training with her, but it's been very relaxed. She's getting closer to the age where I can start riding her, so it's time to start taking things seriously. I've been learning that she has a lot of spirit and energy in her, and my goal is to work with her every day for five days to see how much she learns. I'm also hoping that at the end of these five days, I can actually sit on her back. Day one is going to be our assessment. I just want to see where Maggie is at, what her attitude is, and what needs worked on in the next few days. I'm starting out in her pen with an exercise called lunging. This is where you move the horse in a circle around you. It really helps get their brain thinking and engaged. This is always the first thing I do when I'm working with my horses. She is slipping and sliding in here, so we have to move locations. Selena, I know you get nervous without her, but you're going to be fine. You'll be fine, okay? Don't freak out. Easy. Hey, Maggie. Whoa. Easy. Easy, boo. I have never seen her like this. It tells me that she has a lot of energy stored up, and she needs to get it out. So I brought her over to the pasture. I'm just going to run her around the pasture, let her run around, get her energy out, and then we will work from there. Why are you acting so calm now? Seriously? Hey. What are you doing? She's literally refusing to move. Hey. When a horse rears, that's them saying, I'm not moving my feet. You can't make me. There we go. That's what she needs. Watching her act like this makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to sit on her back by the end of this. Hey. Did you get that energy out? You good now? I think that's as far as we're going to get today. When working with a horse, you never want to end on a bad note. Things always need to end well in some way. So because now that she's calm and relaxed and acting like her normal self again, I'm going to let her go back with her friends for the night and we will come back tomorrow. You're eating thorns? Does that hurt? Are you? She's going back for more. What? Ouch. Girly. Good girl. This is so much better. Your friend is back now. You can stop panicking. All right. I'll be back again tomorrow. After what happened yesterday, it's obvious that there's a lot for us to work on. Today, I'm just going to work off what we learned yesterday. First thing I'm going to do is take her out to the pasture that she was in yesterday and let her run around and get any energy that she needs to out. And I also don't want to stress her out too much by separating her from her friend again, so I'm going to bring Selena out as well. You be good, got it? Don't try to kill me, please. I did not expect things to go as badly as they did yesterday, but young horses can be very unpredictable. You just never know how they're going to act. Go crazy. Well, she's acting really calm right now, which is a really good sign. Let's see if she acts calm when I work with her. Don't eat it. Don't. Ah. I started out, as always, with lunging her. And of course, as soon as I start asking her to move, she's no longer relaxed and shows a bunch of attitude. I just kept gently asking her to move, and it took a lot of rearing, but eventually she relaxed and went around me in nice circles. And I let her take a break for a minute. Whoa, America. You want to run too? Go get her. America's in and going crazy. Go. Oh, yeah. Whoa. Working with horses takes so much patience. But in the end, it is always so rewarding. And even though working with Maggie right now isn't easy, I'm hoping that by the end of this, she will almost be like a completely different horse. Hi. Rose is helping me out. All right. Let's go walk all the way down there. Go get her. So I'm going to put Maggie's halter on my other horse, Selena, and ride Selena up, and follow us to the top. Good girl, Selena. I absolutely cannot wait until I get to ride Maggie around just like I did with Selena. And it's crazy to think that someday I'll be able to. Now it is time to get working on brushing her. You are a mess. This is one of Maggie's least favorite things. Not the object itself, but what it's used for. This is a hoof pick, and you use it to clean out their hooves. And honestly, I don't blame her for not liking it, because I wouldn't like balancing on three legs either. Let me see your foot. Don't bite me. Good girl. Don't put all your weight on me. Please. You know, you're not helping very much. Oh. Hey. What are you doing? Did you... Maggie. I went in the barn for five seconds. She definitely wasn't perfect today, but it was a big improvement from yesterday. For that, she gets a treat. Good girl. Crunchy? Yeah. It is day three of working with Maggie, which means we are just about halfway done with this project. I think we're going to make a lot of progress today. The ice has melted a little bit more in the horse's paddock, so I think I'm just going to work with her in here today. And I want to try working with her on some different things today. First, I'm starting off by doing the regular lunging. She seems so much more laid back today, which is amazing. Just very calm and relaxed. Now that we're finished with that, I decided to try something different today. I asked her to stand still in one spot while I move around her. I've done this with her a lot, and she's pretty good at it. Well, at least until she gets bored of it. Young horses have a very short attention span, that's for sure. But she is very good at this exercise. Good. Now, I'm going to pretend like I'm going to get on your back, okay? No! You can't just walk away. Now it's time to practice mounting her. I'm starting on the ground by just jumping next to her. I know she thinks I'm ridiculous when I do this. Now it's time to actually practice getting on her. I lined her up by the fence and acted as if I was going to sit on her, and this is how she reacted. Maggie. Now we do it on this side. It's everything we do on one side. We do it on the other. Good girl. What are you doing? Okay. You're doing pretty good. Well, Maggie definitely likes to let you know when she's bored. She did good, though. I think I'll be able to sit on you in a couple days. Good girl. Go off. Have fun. Don't eat my boot. Or the tripod. She knows how to open these. She is very smart. I'm actually really excited for tomorrow. It's going to be a lot of fun. I have some really fun plans, so I guess I'll see you then. Today we are doing desensitization, which is basically just a fancy word for I grab a bunch of random things and go crazy with them to get her used to it. So let's get into it. This is literally going to be so much fun. I don't want to overwhelm her, so I'm starting off with something she already knows pretty well. I use this when I lunge her basically as just an extension of my arm to make my cues more clear. I never actually touch her with it, but she did pretty good with this. She also loves to bite it. Not sure why. Now we're going in with something a little bit scarier. Plastic bags. I actually don't think she's ever seen these before. What is that? I don't think she knows how to feel about them. Please, please. You're okay. It's okay. Oh my goodness. No, it's okay. You're good. She's definitely curious about them, which is good. I think she's come to the conclusion that they don't actually want to eat her. So now I just make sure that she's really comfortable with them and wouldn't freak out if she ever saw one. And look at that. Fear destroyed. Literally. You look so funny. After bringing out the hula hoop, I brought this net thing out and she wasn't too interested in it, but it was still pretty funny. How did you do this? Now it's time for the best part, the tarp. This is most horses' worst enemy. Let's see what Maggie thinks of it. What is this? What is that? Good girl. You are such a good girl. You are just so chill. The goats are curious too. Nice. Boo. Hey Maggie, what's going on? Having fun? Well, she's most definitely having a lot of fun with this. This is so much fun and it's going to help her so much. If we're ever riding one day and a plastic bag just comes out of nowhere, she's got to be good. So now that she's had one on her ear for five minutes, I think she'll be good. She's loving it. This is definitely her favorite thing we've done so far. You are such an angel. Maggie, of all the things here, you have to play with that. Nope. Maggie. Stop it. I think that's enough for today. That was so much fun. Tomorrow is the big day. I will try to sit on her back and we're going to hope she doesn't rear up or buck me off. I am so anxious to see how it goes. So, I will see you then. All right, today is finally the day. We're going to see if all my hard work has paid off. I'm going to try and mount her and hopefully she doesn't buck me off. Let's do this. That wasn't the best she's ever done, but it's going to have to be good enough. So, it's finally time for me to get on her. My brother. Hello. You ruined that. Sorry, let's try that again. My brother Isaac is going to be helping me with this and he's going to be the one that gets on. I'm just kidding. You're going to hold her. Have you ever held a horse a day in your life? No, they're pretty heavy. Isaac. Okay. So, you stand here and hold her. No matter what happens, don't let go and don't let her move. Hear that? No moving. Hey, Maggie. All right. You ready? Good girl. Okay, I'm fully on her. She doesn't care. Good girl, Maggie. I wonder if she's even noticed. No, I don't think she cares at all. Walk her back a little bit. Okay. Good girl. She acted like nothing at all happened. Like I wasn't even on her back. Wow. You did so good. Yes, you were a good girl. Don't eat me. Well, I don't think saddle training her is necessarily going to be easy. But it's a good thing that she will actually accept me being on her back. Good girl.