The Last Day

What a great way to end this journal! Today he finally allowed me to approach him at liberty. I'm not even sure how it happened, we were trying to haze him into the small pen to get the lunge line on him, and Christina got frustrated and went for the whip. I noticed he was trying especially hard to get my attention, so I stopped her and went towards him. It worked, surprisingly enough. I just felt it that he was ready and receptive. I can feel this horse. I can control his body with every movement of my own. It's as if there are wires running from his brain to mine, and I know what he'll do before he does it.

That's not to say that I don't get frustrated. Generally, I get frustrated when I leave the round pen and begin thinking about what to do next. My personality leans more towards doing things methodically and doing the same thing over and over; with training a horse, one cannot do that. One must be constantly listening to the animal and using what he tells you to come up with new and different ideas.

This is as good of a place as any to say it: I am so grateful for the chance to have done this. My whole life I've assumed that I don't have what it takes to be a trainer, that I'm not a good enough horsewoman because I got such a late start compared to my classmates. While I'm far from being qualified to really train, at least I have hope now. This has given me the confidence to take on a project horse for the summer. I'll be honest, I didn't read the books we were supposed to read until almost this week. I went off my gut nearly this entire class and didn't want to be influenced by the ideas of three other trainers. I've read a limited amount of literature in the past, but mostly I just wanted to see what I, Jenifer Shetley, had in my heart and soul. Now that I've read the books, I'm seeing that a lot of what I felt is written in those books. That makes me feel a bit vindicated in the actions I've taken with him all semester. With the events of today and reading the books, it makes me feel like I've actually done something right, if there is such a thing as right or wrong in training horses.

The open, trial-and-error format of this class bolstered my confidence more than anything. Nobody would breathe down my neck and tell me what I was doing was wrong. It was so freeing and so conducive to learning. I learned more than I ever thought possible, and so many doors were opened with this class.

Basically...thank you.