Hanna had just finished her second Blaze’s Tribute Trainer’s Challenge, and her horse, Irish Red, was sold at the auction, to a woman who loves him more than most things. <3 She had a her first client horse in for training, so yeah, let’s throw an unhandled mare from the auction in the mix. Heck, why not?
We went to the auction just to see how things ran, what kind of horses they had available, prices things went for etc. We had been talking about getting horses and having Hanna train them, then selling them to good homes, but we really didn’t mean now. Well, maybe we did since we took a trailer with us. *eye roll*
It was our first time at the sale. We walked through the pens, looked at the horses available. Checked conformation. Wrote down numbers. Made a list of possibilities. And then everything went out the window when the auction started. I had a hard time keeping up with the auctioneer and actually knowing what the bid was at.
We had our eye on a gorgeous gray horse. It came up for bid and I thought it was at 3 THOUSAND… unfortunately, for us, it was at 300. We missed that one. Then Delilah came in. A cute little red dunn. She was not on our list. She was not on our minds. But I got a feeling about her and we bid, and we got her!
We paid and went out back to get her in the trailer.
If you are on Tik Tok… you know the OH NO sound. That was my feeling. My belly dropped out and I immediately had some buyers remorse. She was completely unhandled and seemed fairly unhinged. They boxed her in a corner and got a halter on her (backwards), and then ran her through into the trailer.
She actually stood quite well in the trailer on the way home. When we arrived home we opened the trailer door and let her out into the pen.
She was terrified of people. Reactive. Resource gaurded. A little kicky.
What had we done? My anxiety was through the roof about this horse.
This is the first unhandled horse we’ve had. The first time Hanna would work on halter breaking, leading, all the beginning things, and honestly, I felt like we were in well over our heads.
Ryan, on the other hand, Mr Calm, Cool and Collected. He just walked right in and started making friends with her. She warmed up to him pretty quickly, and would let him pet her. He got the first hug. 🙂
Hanna started working with her, but it was very up and down. She overreacted to everything, and it was kind of scary. The things Hanna knew weren’t really working. So Delilah sat. And ate. We petted on her through the fence. Ryan went in and petted on her and fed her treats LOL. It wasn’t part of the plan to leave her sitting for a month, but in the end I think it was one of the best things we could have done.
It was sometime in July I was watching Horse.TV and found a series called the “Horse Guru”. We watched the whole thing and kind of fell in love with Michael Gascon and his training techniques. We signed up for his membership site and began watching all the videos. With a new way of looking at things Hanna went back out and started with Delilah again.
This time… magic happened.
I don’t know if it was Michael’s stuff, or the time off, but everything started clicking.
She got her halter broke and giving to pressure.
She got her leading.
She got her desensitized and calm enough to do just about anything with her.
She got her lifting her front feet, and had a good visit with the farrier.
She took her outside the pen for the first time. Introduced her to obstacles.
Next up is saddling and riding. She’s already making plans to take her to a fun show to start introducing her to new places.
She is going to make someone a really good little mare. Hanna continues to work with her. If you’d like to follow their progress you can follow their facebook page Gentling Delilah.
