Introducing: Jupiter

I gave you guys a sneak preview of my new full training horse, Jupiter, but haven't had the time to talk about the details. And there are a lot of details.

As you may have guessed from the toothpick build, long legs, neck, and ears, he is a saddlebred. He just turned four in April, which is right around when his owner contacted me.

His owner, Cindy, is friends with my friend, Sandy. Cindy has ridden and competed gaited horses for eleven years. She has two Tennessee Walkers named Blue and Revy.

Photo ©Greg Katseyeanis/For The Star-Ledger

Cindy's dream horse has been a buckskin saddlebred, and when she saw Jupiter online last fall, she knew she had to have him. I've done some sleuthing, as I always do with new client horses, and have gotten a pretty complete picture of his history.

Jupiter, registered name Paddyngton's Take Five. Was born in Michigan, at what seems to be a pretty well known and respected saddlebred farm.

Jupiter and a friend as foals (photo from Google).

Apparently, Jupiter was handled pretty extensively in Michigan, and even showed (and won!) in the futurity classes.

From there, he was listed for sale.

After that, the story gets a little blurry. Cindy bought him and had him shipped from Michigan in October of last year. That was apparently quite a stressful situation for the young horse, and he arrived skinny and stressed out. It wasn't long before he was diagnosed with and treated for ulcers.

When Cindy bought Jupiter, she boarded him at a barn about 15 minutes from my house. In fact, I actually met him over the winter when I shipped a horse there for a client. I remember seeing an adorable buckskin face with a shaved forelock, and asking if he was a saddlebred. I was told he was just a baby, and I remember that he was a total pocket pony.

Eventually, Jupiter went off to training at a relatively local saddleseat barn. My understanding is that he was there for two months. In that time, Cindy grew increasingly unhappy with his progress, or lack thereof. She got reports that her horse didn't have what it took to become a show horse. She heard that he wouldn't cross tie and was prone to violent tantrums. He wouldn't take a bit. He was reactive and dangerous. There was no way anybody was going to be sitting on him any time soon. I don't know the whole story and I am not pointing any fingers. Everything I know is from second or third hand reports. She started to suspect that this barn was a good place for show horses, but not necessarily a great fit for a young horse.

When she called me to ask about training, she told me, "I want him to learn to be a horse first. If he becomes a show horse down the line, that's great, but I want him to be happy and sane first."

Cindy was interested in full training board, and at first I wasn't sure that was possible. My schedule is completely packed. I have more clients than I know what to do with. My competition schedule is busy and erratic. I have Booger to work every free minute that I have. I can't have a training horse at home right now, and I'm not sure I want to get into boarding horses at Carolyn's again, even though it's a possibility.

I listed all my concerns, but Cindy had heard good things and really wanted me to at least come evaluate the horse. She was nice, local, and a friend of a friend. Plus, she was moving Jupiter back to the barn I had originally met him at.

I scheduled an evaluation and went to Biltmore.

While I was there, I got a call from Clare, the dressage and therapeutic instructor who I met in my Bluestone days, and who has since become a friend. It turns out Clare is giving lessons and running the therapeutic program at the barn Jupiter was coming back to. She had come to the barn that night and heard people talking about the fact that I was going to be training there. Everyone kept asking her if she knew me, and the answer was an enthusiastic, "Of course I know Dom!" It's such a small, small world.

The week after Biltmore, I ran down the street to meet Cindy and evaluate Jupiter. We talked about goals and set backs and plan. I brought the horse in, and he seemed inquisitive and friendly, as I remembered him.

The rundown was as follows:

• Jupiter is very anxious and reactive, also easily distracted
• He doesn't cross tie
• He runs backwards in response to anything he doesn't like
• Jupiter is 16.1hh or so and has a very long neck, and has learned that putting his head up to where nobody can reach is a great evasion
• Bridling is a problem
• He has been clipped and bathed in the past, and reportedly at the most recent barn
• He has been long lined
• Steering on the long lines has been problematic in the past
• He knows how to lunge and knows his verbal cues
• He has worn a saddle and had one person sit on him while being led by another
• His ulcer treatment was almost done and he had gained a significant amount of weight back
• Jupiter's bloodlines include Harlem Globetrotter, who is notorious for throwing high strung, very hot horses
• Cindy would like Jupiter to be a five gaited show horse down the line
• More than that she wants him to be her pet riding horse, and plans to keep him forever

My evaluation consisted of bringing the horse in, discussing my methods, answering a lot of questions, and assessing the bridling situation. As promised, Jupiter wanted nothing to do with having the bridle put on his head. Despite the fact that he wore a bit as a weanling and yearling, and long lined with a bridle on, he threw his head up and darted backwards as soon as he saw the bridle coming. In the past, he was reportedly just backed into a corner and bridled anyway. Yikes.

I spent the next little while working on teaching a head down cue, as I do with all the horses I work with. Jupiter picked it up in record time, and it was only a few minutes before he was just hanging out with his head down by my hip on a loose lead. My first recommendation was to invest in a rope halter, which the barn happily provided. My second recommendation was to forget show bits and double bridles for a while and just work in a double jointed snaffle with full cheeks, which Cindy already happened to own. 

It took some work, but I got Jupiter to stand quietly for bridling that day. He still wasn't thrilled, but there was no tantrum, and he was perfectly happy once the bridle was actually in placed.

I was officially hired. Now all I had to do was find an extra five hours in my week (plus driving time). I managed to shift my schedule a bit and sacrifice some sleep/meal time, and I have been working Jupiter five days a week for the last two weeks. In that time, he has already made an incredible amount of progress. 

I am thoroughly enjoying working with Jupiter. He is a bright horse who wants to please, and he is a quick learner. He is a combination of smart and sensitive, which takes extra patience and consistency, and can turn sour very quickly. I have found that, in general, the things that he has never had done before come quickly and easily with almost no fuss, and the things that he reportedly already knows are the things that seem to set him off the most. Nobody will ever know what exactly happened between his futurity days in Michigan and his arrival back at the farm down the street, but somewhere, something didn't click.

I also adore Cindy. She makes an excellent client. She genuinely has the horse's best interests in mind and is a hands-on horse owner. She is low pressure, and open to new methods and theories. She asks good questions and loves frequent updates, but doesn't try to tell me how to do my job. Plus she's just a nice person all around.

Our training started off in the small square paddock next to the main ring at the farm. As usual, I started off by treating Jupiter like a completely unhandled horse. Whenever I'm working with a greenie or a remedial horse, I go through all my training steps to assess what holes might exist. Very often, a horse with a behavioral problem is simply missing some basic step in its training. As for green horses: there are just things that I want them all to know in a certain order.

As promised, Jupiter had some anxiety about the cross ties at first. I found out he was always cross tied in a stall back in Michigan, so he couldn't go back more than a few steps. When tied in a barn aisle, this turned into him backing up, hitting the cross ties, panicking, and continuing to fly back until the cross ties broke. Needless to say, that's a good way for a horse to end up with a fear of cross ties. 

He did have one episode early on in the process where he tried to escape the cross ties. I had already worked on a 'come forward' cue to combat his instinct to run backwards (probably my least favorite evasion in horses), and was able to pull him out of the panic before any damage was done. 

I have slowly introduced cross tying to our daily routine, starting with just a few seconds at a time and working our way up. These days, I am able to leave him standing in the aisle while I gather tack, etc. Currently, he just hangs out, watching the action with a foot cocked. He didn't even react when a young girl came running down the barn aisle at a dead spring, unsupervised. My heart jumped to my throat when I saw her coming, but Jupiter barely glanced at her as she darted past.

At first, I just worked Jupiter in the rope halter with his bridle over top. I would have skipped the bridle entirely, except I wanted to incorporate putting it on into our regular routine. Jupiter is still not 100% cooperative for bridling, but he no longer runs (or walks) backwards. He doesn't fling his head around any more. Instead, he stands quietly, and allows me to bridle him on the first attempt, after only a few seconds of resistance. I am hoping that in a little while, it will be like he never had a problem.

Listening closely during one of our first sessions.

Our ground work started with yielding the haunches (no problem) and the shoulders (a little trickier). Jupiter immediately picked up on the fact that doing the right thing results in a release of pressure. As I suspected, it takes a very minor cue to get him to do anything.

Lunging turned out to be a non-issue, and something he had obviously done before. Jupiter gladly went out on the end of the line and circled until further notice. It only took him a try or two to learn my 'come to neutral' cue, and less than half an hour to learn to whoa and change direction based on just body language.

To my delight, I was able to free lunge him on our very first session together.  He picked up on the concept in record time. This video was taken on my second day working with him:

The next thing we worked on was bending left and right, a concept he had clearly never heard of before (and which may be totally unnecessary in a saddleseat career. I don't know.)

When I first introduced the idea, he responded perfectly naturally by trying to spin in order to evade the pressure.

But, within a few minutes, he grasped what I was asking for.

He hasn't faltered since.

I also started to do a little bit of desensitizing. Jupiter is a very jumpy and reactive horse by nature, and I've been very careful not to overwhelm him. I do a little bit of this with him at the end of each session, and his tolerance and comfort zone are growing slowly, but steadily.

Not a fan at first.

Ending on a much better note.

After that, I sort of started to cut to the chase. I saddled Jupiter the next day. He was completely fine with having the pad and saddle tossed on his back, and had zero reaction whatsoever to being girthed. He did offer a few bucks the first few times I asked him to canter while wearing it, but nothing I wouldn't expect of any young horse.

Over the course of the rest of the week, I introduced the mounting block and the idea that horses are to stand completely still alongside it until further notice. The first time I climbed up there and flapped the stirrup leathers, Jupiter jumped sideways and snorted in alarm, but it wasn't long before I was able to bump him all over and do anything I wanted while standing above him.

That Thursday, I leaned across his back and let him carry me around for a few strides. I would have thrown a leg over right then and there, but there was nobody else on the property and I didn't want to do anything foolish.

The following morning, on our sixth session, Jupiter's owner joined me at the side of the ring while I worked with her horse. Jupiter was on his very best behavior, and after going through everything he'd learned that week, I put my foot in the stirrup and swung on board. He did not care at all.

His owner cried. In six sessions, we got him closer to a riding career than he'd come in six months. I got a lot of kudos from everyone at the barn, which I'll admit felt very good. The greatest reward, however, was seeing how relaxed and at ease Jupiter was becoming.

We spent the following week just working on walking with a rider on board. As with most young horses that I start, the toughest part was getting him to walk off after I got on board. I am so careful to install a parking brake that they're not always sure it's ok to move off. It's not a bad problem to have.

It wasn't long before Jupiter learned that leg= go. I did long line him once to see how his steering was (the answer is 'not great').

Mostly I just get on and go, though.

Surprisingly, and perhaps best of all, Jupiter focuses just fine regardless of what else is going on around the farm. He tip toes carefully around the ring, as though afraid to drop me, and doesn't put a foot out of place even when things get sketchy. He ignores things like horses working in the main ring, geese hissing and flapping in the paddock with us, and a horse jumping in the water trough and splashing around in the corner. He has been a joy to work with over all.

On Thursday night, I did finally find something that Jupiter is completely incapable of handling at the moment. He absolutely, positively cannot abide any kind of spraying. Fly spray, water bottle, bath hose... it doesn't matter. I thought he was going to go through the fence the first time I spritzed the fly spray (and I wasn't even facing him!)

Of course, that was the night that everyone was coming and going from the barn. Usually, there aren't more than one or two people there when I work. I plan around the busy lesson schedule so that I'm not disrupting life at the farm. On this night, however, there was therapeutic riding, a lesson, and a boarder returning from a show, on top of all the people who were there just to ride.

Jupiter put on an epic show, rearing, running backwards, panicking, and just generally throwing me around like a rag doll. And that was just from me trying to get him to stand within ten feet of the hose in OFF position!

The bathing area at this particular barn is less than ideal. It's an old facility and the wash stall is a bare slap of cracking concrete. There is a low wall on one side, but that's it. The area sits on a slight slope, and backs up to the tractor shed, where sharp equipment lurks in the shadows. There are no cross ties or tying post. The hose connects to a free standing spigot. That's it. I'm not sure I've ever had to introduce a horse to bathing in a worse set up. I'm also not sure I've ever worked with a more bath-resistant horse... and I prepped yearlings for four years!

I started off by just asking Jupiter to step forward onto the concrete. Since his response to everything is to back up, this was a battle in and of itself.

Just as he stood perched at the edge of the slab, head lowered, thinking about his next move, a woman approached him, clucked, and tapped his hindquarters.
I raised my hand in a stopping motion. "Please! Please don't help me with him. I need him to do this my way." I was polite, but admittedly quick in my response. I know her intentions were good, but I don't want or need anyone else to 'help' when I'm working with a horse.
"Oh.. well, excuse me! I'm so-and-so. I own this place." Of course you do. *facepalm* I had obviously offended her.
I back pedaled quickly, telling her that I appreciated her nice gesture, and that I didn't want to endanger her. I also sucked up a bit, asking where I could find supplies to clean the wash stall after I was done.

I felt everyone's eyes burning into me as I worked with Jupiter. He made slow progress, responding just as I hoped he would, but in a barn full of lesson horses, schoolies, and therapy mounts, I'm sure it looked terrible.

I ended the session with Jupiter standing at my side with his head lowered while I ran the hose at half throttle, facing away from him. I didn't even try to touch him with the water.

By the time I was done, he was sweating and puffing and probably could have actually used a bath. I had to hand walk him for 20 minutes before I was able to put him away for the night. I was exhausted.

I called his owner on my way home to let her know we'd hit a road block and that I may have offended the barn owner and made quite a spectacle of myself.

"Well, the other barn owner, her sister, she thinks the world of you so I wouldn't worry about it. You know what you're doing and I trust you. You can put riding on the back burner for now. I really want him to learn how to be a good horse in general. It's great that you can sit on him, but he needs to learn to bathe and spray."

Have I mentioned I love her?

Yesterday, I went back. Once again, the barn was bustling, but this time with mostly people that I know. I started off with the water bottle in the square paddock, and he was much more composed about it. I only worked on it for a few minutes, and then went back to the wash stall to do battle with the hose full of lava.

Well, it took me an hour, but I was eventually able to hose Jupiter on both sides without him trampling me or running backwards. He still wasn't 100% comfortable, but it was above and beyond anything we'd even attempted the night before. I had Emily, who works at Bluestone and takes lessons with Clare, take a video for me to show his owner his progress.

We worked for a little bit longer after that, and I was able to spray him on both sides without him hunching his back and flinching. At least scraping him off wasn't a big deal.

And that brings us about up to date on Jupiter. I have him in training for at least another month at this point. I hope to get him walking and trotting in the main arena by then. He has already lunged in the big ring, and doesn't seem at all bothered by the change in scenery. I also hope to have him acting civilized, if not completely seasoned, on the ground. Bathing and bridling will be our biggest challenges still, but I am confident that he will continue to come along in leaps and bounds.

I have tons of photos of the big guy in action, but I will probably post them in a separate post since this one has already gotten much longer than I've intended.

If you read all that, good for you. The TL;DR version:

I have a new training client. He's a baby saddlebred with a jumpy personality, but he's coming along well. Also, look at his pretty mane.