This Spring I started thinking about adding a younger pony to my herd. I found a nearly perfect little appaloosa yearling I really wanted. But distance, weather and his current owners desire to free up the lambing barn caused it not to come together. So I was shopping for the right pony, despite Darrin's head shaking. One cold morning Carol called and said "I found a pony for you. He is free to the right home and close enough I can help you get him home. You should call and we can go see him." Being the fools we are of course we rushed right in or in this case right out the door to see the pony. You can see in the picture of the pony how pleased with herself my dear friend Carol is. Before long the new pony was standing in my corral eating my hay and I was looking for an Apple name for him. All of my ponies have apple names....cute huh? Anyway he became "Spy" or more correctly Northern Spy...its an apple, look it up.

Spy's story wasn't very long. He was bought by this woman at auction as a stallion to breed her mini mare. When she sold the mare, Spy was gelded. She said her grand-daughter rode him and spent time with him but it should have tipped me off that she also said he is NOT a kids horse. Also the woman said she was going to be gone a lot this summer and the pony could not be on pasture due to near founder. This was the reason for the "free to good home" status. All that was fine with me. I can monitor the pasture and no kids on the scene here. So I adjusted my dreams of a appaloosa spotted pony and went pinto again. To his credit however he does have some nice round appy style spots on his hip....just three, but I am counting them. Which brings me to the topic of this post...trust.

It didn't take me long to figure out Spy had been cowboyed a bit in his life. I am suspecting that the grand-daughter, if she did ride him, didn't have much fun. The first time I put my niece, Aubree, up on him he got a little hoppy. His back humped up and he really wanted to put his head down and do a try out for the Miles City Bucking Horse Auction. Aubree is not a classic trained rider but that ranch kid is darn sticky when it comes to staying on a horse. Between my efforts to keep his head up and him moving forward and Aubree's ability to stay in the middle of him it only took a few of days before we could longe him in a nice easy circle with Aubree aboard. We didn't hurt or scare him in this process we just let him figure out it was easier to stay relaxed and make Spy think it was all his idea. When a horse, or any animal for that matter, is "shown who is boss", spanked or one of the other neanderthal techniques it violates trust. This violation starts to erode the whole relationship. Do you trust people who hurt you? Do you really like them? In my opinion it really is unfair to punish someone for not knowing what you want. I am not saying I never correct my animals, I do. If they know the rules or the task and they chose not to do it a correction makes sense. This does not violate trust because it is simply a consequence of a bad choice. Further corrections or consequences should not be confused with punishment or worse torture. To be effective the animal can't be afraid to make a mistake. This is what Spy is in the process of figuring out. In time he will learn that a tap on the butt isn't going to turn into a huge fight for survival. His trust is being built brick by brick into something solid. Those little experiences like asking him to walk across concrete or across a wooden bridge will help him learn that I will not ask him to do something hurtful even if it is a little scary at first.
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By the way. After I wrote this I had the chance to go to the movie, BUCK. I highly recommend it to all animal lovers. I found so many links to what I was just writing about. I can't wait to see it again.