Holly was born on May 31, 2004, just outside of Spiritwood, Saskatchewan, at Yellow Rose Longhorns. The people who bred her did not breed for conformation or ability, and her parents had not accomplished much more than being half decent ranch horses. This is quite usual around where I live, since as long as the horse can be rode, it don't matter how the heck they're put together or what their parents did or didn't do.
Holly was simply bred because her parents were a pretty color, and she could be registered as a brand spankin' new breed, the 'Arappaloosa', which is a cross between an Arabian and an Appaloosa. "Then", her breeders thought, "we can maybe make lots of $$ cause Arappaloosas are so rare and everybody's gonna want 'em." Holly recieved the Appaloosa coloring (varnish roan), the Arabian size, and in the summer, if you look closely, she has a slightly dished face. Other than that, she's not anything special conformation wise.
But, back to Holly's past. Apparently, she changed hands a couple of times before ending up with someone who decided to donate her to 4-H. The club he chose was the one I was in at the time. The older kids started to ride her just after she turned two, and then the club leader turned around and said, "lets raffle her off at $2 a ticket to make some money for the club." She was a light blanket Appaloosa at the time, with a snowflake pattern on her neck and withers. So, we went about selling tickets, and since I didn't have a horse at the time, the leader suggested I buy a ticket. He thought we would do good together, and we were both very inexperienced, me with horses, and Holly with people, and he thought that with his help we could learn together.
I didn't win the raffle, but the people who did had to move at the end of the summer, and they were having trouble with her (they were brand new horse owners who knew absolutely nothing, and later I found out that they were chucking their kids on her while she was out in the pasture, no saddle, bridle, or even halter. She had only had three controlled rides in her life, and they expected her to be a kids horse. No wonder she sent them flying and lost all respect for them. They had no respect for her.) My dad bought her for $500, and we set up an electric fence in our (quite large) back yard.
My mom told me that I had to ride her, or she would be sold, so right away I went to ride her, with my mom helping. My mom had taken riding lessons at about my age, but hadn't been around horses since. We had no saddle and only a halter. My mom put me up on Holly's back and led me around. The first day went well, second day went well, third day, mom decided I should get on bareback BACKWARDS, and I did, panicked, Holly panicked, shied, and I fell. From then on, I was frightened of her, and she knew it. I could halter her, but if I wanted to lead her, she would simply snap at me. I would back off, take the halter off, and run away.
Eventually it got to the point where if I entered the pasture she would come running up to me, bucking, kicking, being a goof, and trying to play, since she did not have another horse to be with. Unfortunately I did not realize this, and I thought she wanted to kill me.
Holly was simply bred because her parents were a pretty color, and she could be registered as a brand spankin' new breed, the 'Arappaloosa', which is a cross between an Arabian and an Appaloosa. "Then", her breeders thought, "we can maybe make lots of $$ cause Arappaloosas are so rare and everybody's gonna want 'em." Holly recieved the Appaloosa coloring (varnish roan), the Arabian size, and in the summer, if you look closely, she has a slightly dished face. Other than that, she's not anything special conformation wise.
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| Holly at 2 years old, when my parents first bought her |
We never were able to register her as an Arappaloosa, because the registry is apparently no longer in existance. So, she's just a pretty colored grade horse with no major conformation faults. She does have slight cow hocks, and her withers are lower than her hips, which makes it hard to fit a saddle to her.
But, back to Holly's past. Apparently, she changed hands a couple of times before ending up with someone who decided to donate her to 4-H. The club he chose was the one I was in at the time. The older kids started to ride her just after she turned two, and then the club leader turned around and said, "lets raffle her off at $2 a ticket to make some money for the club." She was a light blanket Appaloosa at the time, with a snowflake pattern on her neck and withers. So, we went about selling tickets, and since I didn't have a horse at the time, the leader suggested I buy a ticket. He thought we would do good together, and we were both very inexperienced, me with horses, and Holly with people, and he thought that with his help we could learn together.
I didn't win the raffle, but the people who did had to move at the end of the summer, and they were having trouble with her (they were brand new horse owners who knew absolutely nothing, and later I found out that they were chucking their kids on her while she was out in the pasture, no saddle, bridle, or even halter. She had only had three controlled rides in her life, and they expected her to be a kids horse. No wonder she sent them flying and lost all respect for them. They had no respect for her.) My dad bought her for $500, and we set up an electric fence in our (quite large) back yard.
My mom told me that I had to ride her, or she would be sold, so right away I went to ride her, with my mom helping. My mom had taken riding lessons at about my age, but hadn't been around horses since. We had no saddle and only a halter. My mom put me up on Holly's back and led me around. The first day went well, second day went well, third day, mom decided I should get on bareback BACKWARDS, and I did, panicked, Holly panicked, shied, and I fell. From then on, I was frightened of her, and she knew it. I could halter her, but if I wanted to lead her, she would simply snap at me. I would back off, take the halter off, and run away.
Eventually it got to the point where if I entered the pasture she would come running up to me, bucking, kicking, being a goof, and trying to play, since she did not have another horse to be with. Unfortunately I did not realize this, and I thought she wanted to kill me.
My parents train and breed dogs for a living, and we had someone who bought a puppy from us, and in return for us training him, they wanted to train Holly. They were our friends and they knew the trouble I was having with her. So, off went Holly.
They did not have much trouble with her, she was quite an angel for them. And then, that fateful day. They were away for the day, and the power man came to check the meter. One power meter was located inside of the horse pasture, and when the man left, he left the gate open.
All of the horses escaped, and Holly waged war with a barbed wire fence, which she thankfully escaped from, but not unscathed. When out friends returned to their home that night they were greeted by all of the horses on the front lawn. Holly was standing alone, with a foot long, foot wide gash on her left shoulder. It was so bad that the vet told them she should be put down. However, she wasn't their horse, and they thought she had a chance.
Day after day of care later, Holly recovered to perfect soundness. There was no permanent nerve or muscle damage, and the only reminder of that accident is a foot long, jagged scar on Holly's shoulder.
Soon after Holly got better, our friends brought her back. We had built another temporary pasture for her homecoming, as we were still clearing land for a permanent pasture. They dropped Holly off, and left with their own horses. Holly panicked because she was left completely alone after 4 months of constant equine companionship. That night she jumped out of the pasture. We spent the entire next day looking for her, and found her standing with (on the opposite side of the fence) the nearest group of horses.
They did not have much trouble with her, she was quite an angel for them. And then, that fateful day. They were away for the day, and the power man came to check the meter. One power meter was located inside of the horse pasture, and when the man left, he left the gate open.
All of the horses escaped, and Holly waged war with a barbed wire fence, which she thankfully escaped from, but not unscathed. When out friends returned to their home that night they were greeted by all of the horses on the front lawn. Holly was standing alone, with a foot long, foot wide gash on her left shoulder. It was so bad that the vet told them she should be put down. However, she wasn't their horse, and they thought she had a chance.
Day after day of care later, Holly recovered to perfect soundness. There was no permanent nerve or muscle damage, and the only reminder of that accident is a foot long, jagged scar on Holly's shoulder.
Soon after Holly got better, our friends brought her back. We had built another temporary pasture for her homecoming, as we were still clearing land for a permanent pasture. They dropped Holly off, and left with their own horses. Holly panicked because she was left completely alone after 4 months of constant equine companionship. That night she jumped out of the pasture. We spent the entire next day looking for her, and found her standing with (on the opposite side of the fence) the nearest group of horses.
After that, my dad was freaked out, and believed we could not keep her if she was an escape artist, and sent her off to another friends house over the summer to pasture out with 20 other horses. But, in the fall, the permanent pasture was finished, and Holly returned home.
During the summer, I had been taking riding lessons from a local girl. She had taught herself to ride, and looking back, there was a lot of things she was doing wrong, and things she taught me to do wrong. She had no idea what proper saddle fit was, or the equitation seat. She never used her legs for anything except go forward, and contact was something out of her league. But, she was still jumping and giving riding lessons.
It seemed natural to start having riding lessons on my own horse. Things started out well. I even cantered on Holly a couple of times. Then we gave Holly a break for 2 weeks. When I went for the next lesson, as I was just getting up into the saddle with one foot in the stirrup, Holly started bucking. I had absolutely no chance at all of staying on. Even now I'm not quite sure what caused the bucking. The first thing that comes to mind, though, is saddle fit. Perhaps she had grown over the 2 weeks she'd been resting, and the saddle no longer fit. Or, maybe I jerked her in the mouth when I was mounting, and that set her off, as she was still learning and she is an extremely sensitive horse. I don't know, but after that I stopped riding.
I would go out every day and stay with her in the pasture, but she started to get really frisky as winter settled in. She would run up to me, turn around and run away, kicking and bucking. I would go and sit on top of the round bale, watching Holly run around and be crazy. I realize now that she was lonely, and she needed someone to play horse games with, but I didn't even know they existed. This escalated into Holly chasing me into some trees, and then rearing up right over top of me.
After that, I'd had enough. I loved Holly, but I couldn't do anything with her. I'd tried Parelli, Clinton Anderson, Craig Cameron, John Lyons, and traditional methods. None of these were working for Holly. I looked around, planning on giving Holly one more chance before sending her to the auction. What I found was a local trainer. I realize now how lucky I was not to put my trust in one of the many "cowboy horse breakers" that live in my area, and that Cindy (the trainer I found) was not one of them. She too had been raised in local 4-H with a strong "git on that thar horse and ride the tar out of it" mentality, and from a young age disagreed strongly with it.
Her love of horses and her passion to train them in their own language led her to Pat Parelli, which worked out well for her, with docile horses. But, when a horse decided to take advantage of her while lunging the Parelli way, and attack her from behind, she realized that it was not working as well as she thought.
Feeling betrayed by the "natural" horse world she almost gave up on horse training all together, until she found out about Chris Irwin, a horse trainer from Ontario whose non-resistant methods of horse training intrigued and inspired her. Finally, she had found a way that benefited both horse and handler, and was using the horse's very own language.
Perhaps it was fate the brought me to the end of my rope with Holly, and caused me to look around for outside help, and find such an incredible training method. All I know is that I have learned so much about Holly and myself from Cindy, and Chris' methods.
We sent Holly to Cindy, and she told us that Holly was perfect for her. No chasing, biting, stepping on, bucking, or rearing. She said that she was one of the nicest horses she had seen, and she didn't understand why she was there for training, because she was perfect. I couldn't understand why Holly was acting so well for Cindy, when she did all of the above bad things to me, at home.
Then, I realized it must be something to do with me. If Holly was perfect for Cindy, and a holy terror for me, then it must have been me causing her reactions.
Cindy showed me about body language, and how to 'talk' to Holly in her own language. I saw an immediate change. It was amazing. I had never seen a training method make so much sense to me before. You weren't really 'training' the horse. They already knew what they were doing. It was me that had to learn.
Since I still did not trust Holly after all of my bad experiences with her, I spent two years getting all of the ground work completely down pat. Then, with Cindy's help I started riding Holly. But it was not going well. I had not had any good riding experiences with a horse since before Holly had bucked me off, run away with me, etc, so I was terrified of riding. I would lock up and not allow Holly to move. She would feel trapped and crow hop a little, and I would bail. I was so terrified that even if she would drop her head to scratch on her leg, or stumble a little, I would immediately get off.
So, we decided that I needed a good horse that I could learn to trust riding again. Last October, we got Miss B, a chestnut Quarter horse. She is an amazing help to me getting my confidence back, but the only thing bad about having Miss B now is that her and Holly are buddy sour. I guess that is a part of life that we need to work through.
Also, Miss B is very dominant, but in a sneaky way, and she is very good at showing any annoyance, which lately has become me riding her. I still trust her enough to ride her inside, but she really does not enjoy it, and so I don't enjoy it much either. I'm working towards having her rideable again.
I started to ride Holly inside the round pen this winter, but I just couldn't spend enough time with the horses, and by the Spring they refused to be caught, and were very rude to me in their body language and gestures. Those problems drove me to find Chris Irwin's forum ( www.chrisirwin.com/new_forum ) which has turned out to be an awesome support group of other "Irwinites" and with their help I'm now able to catch my horses, I have a greatly improved relationship with them, and I've actually started riding Holly again.
That's kind of the story of my life with my horses and how I became aware of the Chris Irwin method of training horses. It really is great, and I won't ever go back now that I know what I know about horses.
During the summer, I had been taking riding lessons from a local girl. She had taught herself to ride, and looking back, there was a lot of things she was doing wrong, and things she taught me to do wrong. She had no idea what proper saddle fit was, or the equitation seat. She never used her legs for anything except go forward, and contact was something out of her league. But, she was still jumping and giving riding lessons.
It seemed natural to start having riding lessons on my own horse. Things started out well. I even cantered on Holly a couple of times. Then we gave Holly a break for 2 weeks. When I went for the next lesson, as I was just getting up into the saddle with one foot in the stirrup, Holly started bucking. I had absolutely no chance at all of staying on. Even now I'm not quite sure what caused the bucking. The first thing that comes to mind, though, is saddle fit. Perhaps she had grown over the 2 weeks she'd been resting, and the saddle no longer fit. Or, maybe I jerked her in the mouth when I was mounting, and that set her off, as she was still learning and she is an extremely sensitive horse. I don't know, but after that I stopped riding.
I would go out every day and stay with her in the pasture, but she started to get really frisky as winter settled in. She would run up to me, turn around and run away, kicking and bucking. I would go and sit on top of the round bale, watching Holly run around and be crazy. I realize now that she was lonely, and she needed someone to play horse games with, but I didn't even know they existed. This escalated into Holly chasing me into some trees, and then rearing up right over top of me.
After that, I'd had enough. I loved Holly, but I couldn't do anything with her. I'd tried Parelli, Clinton Anderson, Craig Cameron, John Lyons, and traditional methods. None of these were working for Holly. I looked around, planning on giving Holly one more chance before sending her to the auction. What I found was a local trainer. I realize now how lucky I was not to put my trust in one of the many "cowboy horse breakers" that live in my area, and that Cindy (the trainer I found) was not one of them. She too had been raised in local 4-H with a strong "git on that thar horse and ride the tar out of it" mentality, and from a young age disagreed strongly with it.
Her love of horses and her passion to train them in their own language led her to Pat Parelli, which worked out well for her, with docile horses. But, when a horse decided to take advantage of her while lunging the Parelli way, and attack her from behind, she realized that it was not working as well as she thought.
Feeling betrayed by the "natural" horse world she almost gave up on horse training all together, until she found out about Chris Irwin, a horse trainer from Ontario whose non-resistant methods of horse training intrigued and inspired her. Finally, she had found a way that benefited both horse and handler, and was using the horse's very own language.
Perhaps it was fate the brought me to the end of my rope with Holly, and caused me to look around for outside help, and find such an incredible training method. All I know is that I have learned so much about Holly and myself from Cindy, and Chris' methods.
We sent Holly to Cindy, and she told us that Holly was perfect for her. No chasing, biting, stepping on, bucking, or rearing. She said that she was one of the nicest horses she had seen, and she didn't understand why she was there for training, because she was perfect. I couldn't understand why Holly was acting so well for Cindy, when she did all of the above bad things to me, at home.
Then, I realized it must be something to do with me. If Holly was perfect for Cindy, and a holy terror for me, then it must have been me causing her reactions.
Cindy showed me about body language, and how to 'talk' to Holly in her own language. I saw an immediate change. It was amazing. I had never seen a training method make so much sense to me before. You weren't really 'training' the horse. They already knew what they were doing. It was me that had to learn.
Since I still did not trust Holly after all of my bad experiences with her, I spent two years getting all of the ground work completely down pat. Then, with Cindy's help I started riding Holly. But it was not going well. I had not had any good riding experiences with a horse since before Holly had bucked me off, run away with me, etc, so I was terrified of riding. I would lock up and not allow Holly to move. She would feel trapped and crow hop a little, and I would bail. I was so terrified that even if she would drop her head to scratch on her leg, or stumble a little, I would immediately get off.
So, we decided that I needed a good horse that I could learn to trust riding again. Last October, we got Miss B, a chestnut Quarter horse. She is an amazing help to me getting my confidence back, but the only thing bad about having Miss B now is that her and Holly are buddy sour. I guess that is a part of life that we need to work through.
Also, Miss B is very dominant, but in a sneaky way, and she is very good at showing any annoyance, which lately has become me riding her. I still trust her enough to ride her inside, but she really does not enjoy it, and so I don't enjoy it much either. I'm working towards having her rideable again.
I started to ride Holly inside the round pen this winter, but I just couldn't spend enough time with the horses, and by the Spring they refused to be caught, and were very rude to me in their body language and gestures. Those problems drove me to find Chris Irwin's forum ( www.chrisirwin.com/new_forum ) which has turned out to be an awesome support group of other "Irwinites" and with their help I'm now able to catch my horses, I have a greatly improved relationship with them, and I've actually started riding Holly again.
That's kind of the story of my life with my horses and how I became aware of the Chris Irwin method of training horses. It really is great, and I won't ever go back now that I know what I know about horses.
