Starting Endurance Race Training One Millimeter at a time

My goal with Cisco is to make him an endurance racer. He has the perfect confirmation and temperament. The fact that I am just breaking him to ride at 9 years old is beside the point. You have to start somewhere, so our first mounted training goal was a distance of 1 mm, which is basically lifting his foot up and putting it back in the same spot. When we could do that calmly it was time to move on. Our next goal was 1 cm and every time he stamps his foot at a fly, I think he moves about 1 cm. So our second session of endurance race training was a stomping success.



The 3rd session was a much bigger deal. One meter. That's a long way from the fence or bucket where I got on. How does Cisco know to step out without getting frightened? Well, he knows the meaning of "Walk-on". Tapping on the mustang is not required. With the first step, which he offered as if he was saying "it's about time!", I was euphoric. Sitting on the sweet wild boy with the cool wind blowing gently through the cottonwoods. It's the culmination of a dream really! Three times we got that meter done, I slid off and made a big deal of Mr. Cisco. He knows he is the best horse to ever walk the planet.

This morning we did sets of 10 meters around the stall and started working on directional control. I want him to go where I point, he figured it out right away. I had him turning gee and haw quite casually as if he had done it all his life. We never bothered to pick up the lead rope he had draped over his neck. He wants to please me.

A big thunderstorm left our world all wet yesterday afternoon. After it was all done, I only had a few moments to work with the horses before I had to feed. I went into the round pen with a pocket full of horse cookies and they all crowded around where I climbed up on my pedestal of an overturned feeder. Cisco, JD and Cracker Joe all pressed against the pedestal, awaiting for me to climb on. I climbed up on the broad back of Jemez Dancing and rewarded him handsomely. For a moment I waited to see if Cisco would explode at the sight of a mounted horseperson, as he always did before, but when instead he reached out and asked for a horse cookie, I rewarded him with his favorite flavor.

My goal, at age 55, is to get this mustang trained to ride without sustaining any signficant level of tissue damage. We are taking it slow. He's making a lot of progress. Now I am starting to dream of buying him his own saddle. We have a lot of kilometers to put under it.

Yrs,
Patricia