Day to day, progress seems slow but thinking back over the last few months training Odin the Mustang has gone rather quickly. I've only had him for 3 1/2 months. He was well started over 100 days even though there are a million things to do to encourage a horse to be willing and trainable when he was a wild mustang this time last year. Nothing that has happened to him this year likely crossed his mind a year ago. He probably thought it was getting rather cold, water might be hard to find, and the forage was sparse but he had his friends and maybe a few enemies to keep an eye on. That's a full day for a wild horse.
So what's been happening over the last month? We've gone on a "trail" ride, meaning that I've ridden him on the mowed trail around the property. The property is over 50 acres and the trail goes through trees, which means walking through dry leaves. That startled him a bit but Odin handled it well. He jumped a bit when an old blackberry vine attacked his hind legs but even that incident was short. We've worked on standing in the cross ties, fully hooked up, committed. We've worked on trailer loading and took a short drive. I've ridden him mostly in my English saddle because it's easy and I'm kinda lazy.
At the beginning of this month, the time changed so there is no daylight after work. One evening we worked on headlamp training. Odin has likely never seen artificial light move with a person's head. It's hard to imagine what he thinks of that. After initially being startled, he seemed a bit curious about the moving light. I am less inclined to come to the barn after work. If I can get out there one work day a week, I'll have to be satisfied. If it's not raining on the evening I get out there, so much the better.
Last weekend after Odin got in the trailer, we went for a short drive around the block — maybe ten minutes. He was a sweaty mess when I let him out but he willingly got back in. And he got back in yesterday. I left him in there for a few minutes while I went to do other chores, let him out and asked him to go back in. He likes to distract himself by staring at the tractor, the barking dogs, cars pulling into the parking lot. I ask him to focus on the task at hand and he does.
Today is sunny and I'll ride this afternoon. Tomorrow perhaps we'll practice going for a short drive in the trailer. It's all incremental until it's no big deal.
Beege is doing pretty well, considering he's arthritic. He still runs around when he feels like it, paces when his pasture buddy leaves. I've been working on getting him to target a plastic bag. He's doing fine with that. With Beege I have to work on the very easy things and for not very long. After he works himself up it's hard to get him to focus again so I always try to stop before crossing the line. With Odin, I can cross the line then pretty easily go back to where he's comfortable.
Two months of dwindling light until there will be some hope of evening light again.