Letters of the Month

LETTER OF THE MONTH:

October 2005

Hello, I'd like to say you have a fabulous website. I used your round pen and haltering techniques to tame my wild two-year-old. She is a completely different horse now!

LETTER OF THE MONTH:

October 2005

P. B.

Internet

LETTER OF THE MONTH:

October 2005

Sylvia: I Have been using your training methods off the internet for the hard-to-catch horse. I have been using the round pen and have been doing this since September 25 and to say the least I am very happy with the results so far. My horse is approximately 10 years old. We have had her for about 3 years. She has a 7 week old colt. I have him in the round pen when we are doing our lesson. The first lesson was 3 hours long and the others have only been approximately 1/2 hour. She seems to be doing all the things she should be doing per your article. I have also been working with her to not be afraid of the halter per your article. Thanks so much!

D. V.

Mulino, Oregon

LETTER OF THE MONTH:

October 2005

Dear Sylvia, I come from England and have just found your web site. I just had to e-mail you to congratulate you on such a wonderful site!! You are very, very informative, you give precise details on how to perform each technique, you're just amazing!! Your tips and techniques work brilliantly, and also you don't just hint at part of the technique, then expect people to buy a video or book, you actually give the information we need. Many, many thanks to you, Sylvia. I will be continuing to read through all your very interesting training tips every day. Sorry but I can't thank you enough; thank you very much!! Take care.

B. L.

England

LETTER OF THE MONTH:

October 2005

Thank you for the reply! YOUR ADVICE IS GREAT! [i.e., teaching a horse to back up on the ground on cue: http://www.naturalhorsetraining.com/TrainingTips31.html] Got my horse on the right track with backing up. Started all over slowly and calmly, the way you teach, tapping the 12' lead rope, making the rope move just a little until I got the slightest try (horse stepped back one step), stopped, let him rest, and praised him. Tried again, he stepped back. Again with just wiggling the rope, he stepped back. He definitely figured it out that when the rope wiggles: move back. The key for me was once he figured out to move back with the rope wiggling, I did not need to wiggle it as hard as I did the first couple times to get backward movement. I noticed only the slightest side to side wiggle, he knew to step back. I think my problem earlier was I was wiggling it too hard, hence he was scared and was turning around to get away. After a few more successful tries I ended on a positive note. Thanks again!

R. H.

Loxahatchee, Florida

LETTER OF THE MONTH:

October 2005

Hi Sylvia. Firstly I have to say a big thank you! Just 1 month ago I took on a 5-year-old with numerous behavioural problems who just about everybody had written off as being just good for dog food. He had terrorised his former owner to the point of a nervous breakdown and had a list of behavioural problems that made him a nightmare for anybody to handle, and as for being ridden, let's just say he treated any rider fool enough to get onboard with equal disrespect.

When I first met him, my heart broke; he was so beautiful but my goodness his behaviour was so aggressive and dangerous it was awful. He was totally not what I was looking for, but something inside of me told me that I had to at least try to help him, so as to avoid him ending up at the abattoir. In fact if I'm honest, I'd say that I swear to God he was begging me to help him. I couldn't sleep at night for thinking about him and his terrible situation.

Anyway, being fairly experienced with horses and having done some natural horsemanship in Australia, I volunteered to try and work with him and I set about scouring the internet for some natural horsemanship tips to deal with specific behavioural problems and came across your web site and bought your products.

Well, for the past month, I have followed your system of training to the letter and have been rewarded way beyond my expectations and I now have a wonderful horse who is sweet, kind and trusting. Okay, we're a long way from perfect because he's still an aggressive thug with third parties, but we're working on that too. But all of the ground problems have been solved and today I swear he "invited" me to get on him - so I did! And I was rewarded with the most wonderful ride of life. He was young and unbalanced, but there was not one iota of naughtiness, just the absolute desire to do the right thing.

By the way, my absolute favourite of your training tips is the feet handling "trick" with the rope (http://www.naturalhorsetraining.com/TrainingTips16.html). From it being nearly impossible to handle his feet without sustaining injury, he is now 100% cured of that problem. The farrier came and trimmed his feet last week without incident. He actually assumed that it was a different horse he was dealing with.

But I would really appreciate your tips on improving his behaviour and general reaction to other people. He's basically very respectful around me (he accepts me as lead mare) but he is still aggressive to others and will try to bite and kick anybody else who approaches him.

Your advice would be much appreciated.

Kind regards,

J. B.

United Kingdom

 

From Sylvia: Thanks for writing. What a wonderful success story! Great work you are doing there! Natural horsemanship does amazing things for horses, as you're seeing firsthand there. I really applaud your helping this horse.

As for now getting him past his issues with others, what I like to do with a horse like this is to get more people involved in the program, teaching them how to help the horse as well as you are, and have them one by one work with the horse, with you guiding them. Males and females both. The more people you get working with the horse consisently now, using the same methods, the more he will lose his aggression and fears involving all humans and settle down to trusting humans in general for once in his life. If he sees you in close proximity of the lessons you guide others to do with him now, then he'll build greater trust for whom you send in to work with him, and that will eventually translate outward to all other humans. That's your next step there and it will do him good, you'll see.

Keep up the good work! Proud of you!

-Sylvia

If you have a horse problem or question and you

don't see it addressed in TRAINING TIPS or if you

would like to share your success story with our

natural horsemanship training methods...

Contact Sylvia Scott

Email: Sylvia@NaturalHorseTraining.com

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