Trick Training and Natural Dressage

In this post I want to talk about trick training and a type of natural dressage. I am still doing a lot of research and studying, especially on dressage since I basically know nothing about it but I figured this could be a good learning opportunity for all of us. I will be referring to Eva Roemaat (click her name to visit her YouTube channel) throughout this post as I have recently been studying her methods on trick training, natural horsemanship, and natural dressage. She is from the Netherlands and speaks dutch, but you don't need to hear anything, you just need to watch.... I have seen several people do natural horsemanship and trick training but she does it so elegantly that it truly is majestic to watch her with her horses (Shilas, Flip, and Que-Habil). I can only hope one day I can work with horses in such a graceful way.

So what is trick training and natural dressage? Trick training is teaching your horse "commands/tricks" on que such as bow, sit, rear, paw, kiss, spanish walk, lay down, jambette, etc. Natural dressage is dressage, but in a natural way. For example, having your horse at liberty or riding bareback teaching certain movements, and head positions naturally. I am very new to dressage and what exactly dressage is.. also what the purpose is besides making a horse move in some would say,"such an "unnatural" way". But that derives from harsh training methods such as rollkur, not so much dressage in itself. Others on the other hand say that its great for the horses muscles, their flexibility, and it makes a horse supple. And it also makes a rider learn more control.

If you look up dressage it says that dressage is a french term that means "training" and its purpose is to develop the horses natural athletic ability to work making him calm, supple, and attentive to his rider. What throws me off is the word natural..... I don't find anything natural about putting a horse into rollkur to learn an unnatural position in order for a person to win a ribbon, metal, or money. When I was first coming into the horse world I seen dressage and thought it was very beautiful, but I was astonished that these horses foaming at the mouth while being stuck in such an unnatural position with extremely tight reins. I just didn't and still don't understand... Why is that necessary? Why do the judges want to see that? Why don't trainers just train them to do this naturally? I could drop Furys head by the tap of my finger between his ears...

I am hoping to learn more about the actual sport dressage and come to an understanding of the true meaning behind dressage for certain dressage riders. I understand that not all riders put their horses in rollkur so I would love to hear different types of training styles that dressage riders use. Also whether you started your horse your horse from the ground up with teaching dressage, or if you purchased a horse that was already trained in dressage. I would also like to learn more about trick training and what other peoples experiences are with this. For example: have you found trick training helpful with your relationship/bond with your horse, did they catch on quick, what tricks can your horse do.. what type of training style do you use for trick training? Do you use treats, clicker, or a praise? What type of whip/stick have you found that works best (dressage whip, Clinton Anderson stick and string, crop, stock whip)? Did you/do you use verbal commands along with your stick command? Etc!

I am hoping to be doing a lot of this type of training once we buy our own place. I have been looking into becoming a certified professional horse trainer (I can even put PhT after my name, ooooh! lol!) and getting my certification in stable management but that will take time and several thousands of dollars to pay for my courses. So that will be a long term goal for myself. All options are open at this point in time, I just know I want to work with horses.. Which I will.


**Educating equine and Training tots; Leading to Liberty**

Meeting Fury

Hey Everyone.. sorry about the lapse in time since I wrote my last post but it was my daughters birthday party and we've been extremely busy. Anyways, today I'm going to do a post on Fury. He was my first horse and I had him from September 2015 to July of 2016. I want to talk about how I got Fury, how I ended up moving an hour an a half from where I'm from to move by him, and I especially want to talk about his training and why we had to get rid of him... As I mentioned in my previous post Gabriela Medeiros featured Fury and I on her blog so I will be repeating a lot of what was mentioned in her post about us, but I wanted to personally introduce Fury in full detail to everyone on here. Lets get to it.....

In August of 2015 I went on my quest to find a horse as that's what my fiancee and I had decided we wanted for our future.. HORSES! We currently were living in the city, but our lease was up at our place and we were ready to make some huge changes to say the least.. I ended up finding a beautiful Tennessee Walking Horse.. He was 5 years old, but was still a stallion. He basically had no training as the people who had him never could work with him. I went and looked at him, and when I seen him, I just knew I had to have him. He was pretty beat up as he was in a pasture made from barbed wire which he would get tangled up in constantly because he was being housed next to another stallion. They would fight whenever the opportunity presented itself. I saw this first hand. I visited Fury for about a month before I was able to bring him to a family members house. But this was to be a very temporary thing as they really didn't want a horse on their property. So I ended up buying Fury in the end of September with never being able to work with him, or enter a pasture with him because the owners would not let me go in there just in case someone got hurt. I asked my very good friends Scott and Julie to help me transfer him as I didn't have a horse trailer.. You will hear a lot about Scott and Julie throughout my blog. Fury was transferred just fine, and handled it perfectly surprisingly.

Approx. 4 weeks after buying Fury
(Stallion)

This then brings us to October and I started Furys training immediately as a stallion because no vet would geld him until spring. I was learning while training Fury just as much as he was. I have really struggled with what direction I want to go with my style of training maily because there is such scrutiny against the words "natural horsemanship" (the style I wanted to learn) and what they mean as a whole but also to each individual person (refer to my previous post) but besides not knowing what direction I wanted to go, I also basically had no experience either. Fury progressed very fast and teaching him things was a breeze.. all of his disrespectful behaviors went away almost immediately. After his hooves not being trimmed in 3 years, we were picking up his hooves, he was able to walk with a loose lead respectfully, he was learning how to lunge correctly and respectfully, we even set up small jumps for him to walk over, and we were able to ride him bare back with someone holding the lead.. And this all happened within about 8 weeks.  During this time we were driving an hour and a half (ONE WAY) so 3 hours of total drive time, every other day to work with Fury. The place where we were getting hay from were people we talked to of course on a regular basis and we all became pretty good friends (or so I thought) and offered us the place next door to rent that had a trailer and a few acres on it. We of course accepted! So we made the journey of moving and uprooting our whole lives and family an hour and a half away to be by our HORSE! There was of course some contingencies upon moving in, and one was to get Fury gelded before moving him to the property, so that's exactly what we did…

In March of 2016, we got Fury gelded at an extremely reputable vet in our area, specifically for horses. So keep in mind that Fury was a stallion all throughout his training thus far. Surgery went well, and we moved him to the property with us. Fury was showing typical stallion behaviors as the landlord/neighbor had 3 mares and 1 gelding that he could see from across the fence (our fence and their fence on 1 side had a 12ft gap between them). This was not very alarming to any of us as it takes time for all the testosterone to leave his body, especially since he was gelded late. During this time I had very strict instructions to keep him moving, to work with him at least 3 times a day for a minimum of 20 minutes per session. 

Story goes on and my friend/landlord/neighbor was able to see me work with Fury a lot to say the least during his time of healing. As everyone should know by now, I have since figured out what type of training suites me and what I have gravitated towards (again, my previous post) and my landlord/friend/neighbor was not impressed with how soft I was with Fury. She asked me if she could work with Fury to try to give me some "pointers". I unfortunately agreed. She uses a lot of force when it comes to training her horses, and she believes that you can "break" a horse and I mean mentally, which basically means the horse has no other choice but to listen out of fear or it gets beat. But this was all coming to my knowledge as time went by. It's not like she held a sign to her forehead that said, "hey I beat my horse if it doesn't listen". Lol. After only 2 times of her working with Fury and me watching my horse run circles around her out of fear, I had enough. I told her she was no longer going to be working with Fury and I would train my horse my way, no matter how long it takes. She was pretty damn irate to say the least. Sad thing is, is that in just 2 times of her working with him, whenever he would see her, he would freak out. And when I say freak out, I mean he would pace the fence so bad he would put a path from beautiful green grass and turn it into dirt. He would challenge her across the fence as he would another stallion. He would also rear, buck, strike, kick etc. It was awful to see…. Fortunately I could go out by him, and get him back into a clear state of mind as he never really challenged me any more than a typical pushy horse and he especially never attempted to maliciously hurt me in any way!

Fury was never with another horse for 5 years, and every experience he had with a horse was bad thus far so when he kept showing stallion like behavior from across the fence towards the neighbors horses, SHE of course thought it was me and my training that was the problem. I knew otherwise, but I didn't have the change to figure it out.. But I'll get to that soon. 

Anyways, about 6 weeks or so after his geld he broke out of the fence after we expanded his pasture and he of course high tailed it over to her property to her horses. He ended up biting her gelding and then we were able to break them up about 2 minutes after he broke into her fence. During this process she was screaming for her husband to shoot my horse, and it was just a crazy situation. She just simply didn't like him, and that was a great excuse for her to put an end to that horse (in her eyes). I was then 2 days later served with a 10 day notice to get my horse off the property and I was very upset. I thought she should have been an adult and talked to me about it, and we could have resolved it. She didn't have to serve me with a 10 notice. BUT I did understand because I would be upset if another horse bit my horse too. I felt as if it wasn’t about that situation in itself, it was the whole Fury situation. As mentioned before, he didn't like her, she didn't like him, so perfect for her.. Now she can make me get rid of him because she knew we didn’t have the means to be able to board him somewhere.

I then sold Fury to what I thought was a trainer.... I was supposed to get a buy back option after his "training/ being with other horses was fixed" but this guy went and sold him to someone else a week later making a 1,000 dollar profit off my horse for some lady to be calling me asking me why he's mounting mares and to tell me that his testosterone is testing as a stallion. She got my phone number from the vet I took Fury to. Well, I of course didn't know that he still tested as a stallion. That explains why he did what he did by me... The woman was in her 60's and was told Fury was trail safe and child safe, which he is neither. So after a few phone calls back a forth she decided to sell him. The next owner then was calling me and telling me she didn’t know the situation was this bad with him, and that within 2 days of them buying him they got a notice to vacate the boarding facility. She also is rehoming him. I have told every person I've talked to that this "trainer" was supposed to give me a buy back option, and I was told his training would take a minimum of 6 months.. So in the meantime we moved out of where we were renting and got a different place that doesn’t have land. 

Every person has said that the issue is not when Fury is by himself. That Fury is an amazing horse by himself. The problem is when Fury sees other horses. If someone would be okay with having 1 horse forever, Fury would be that horse. He lunges, walks, plays, yields, backs, etc. All at liberty. and apparently also knows how to bow now. He is the perfect gentleman, he doesn’t crowd, he isnt pushy, he's amazing!!! It's unfortunate that his geld went wrong, or whatever it is… I still of course have days where I feel as if it's all my fault. But I know damn well I did everything I could for him before I had no other choice but to rehome him… I did my best, and I pray every night that he knows that.

I will keep in contact with every owner who gets him until we buy a place. I will hopefully be able to buy him back, or maybe he'll get lucky and will find the right someone and stay with them forever. Whatever it may be, I just hope that he gets the chance to live.

Below I will attach a video I made of my journey with Fury... You will be able to see plenty of pictures, and video clips of us together. I hope everyone watches and enjoys. 
Click this to watch my YouTube video of me and Fury

**Educating Equine and Training tots; Leading to Liberty**