POINT OF VIEW
Hopefully, the horse won’t be ten years old and sold by the time you are finally ready to get on. You will have learned that the easiest thing to do when the horse suddenly jumps with his tail between his legs (just be- cause a paper flew by) is to elegantly adjust your Stetson (or your Irish flat cap, etc.), rebalance yourself without squeezing your legs for dear life, and therefore avoid a serious bucking fit and subsequent public humiliation. If things get worse, you will certainly be able to graciously slide off, pretend you are not scared at all and jump right back on in a gravity-defying style. I once had a student/assistant from Australia, Tim
within the afternoon. If you are not currently fit enough to cope with the amusing surprises thrown in by young- sters, meaning if you are not as agile, relaxed and skilled as the guy from the fair, you need a complete physical and emotional personal makeover before you consider starting your nice young horse under saddle that quickly! Train yourself thoroughly as a Marlboro man body- double (the ones who do the real falling off in the photo shoots). Enroll at the gym and take a yoga class to be- come flexible and agile, learn to control your breathing and, most importantly, practice transcendental medita- tion to manage your emotions at all times. Alternately, you can repeatedly go on really scary carnival rides until you can keep breathing throughout. By the time you can act as cool and savvy as the
young man in tight jeans from the fair, you can believe that you are going to be just fine with that youngster.
Forster, who could get on a green horse in under an hour, without lunging, round-penning, a saddle or bri- dle. He made me appreciate the amazing qualities of self-control and athleticism necessary for the exercise, all of them proving to be much more important than the actual theory behind his success. After a few years of ‘one-hour colt breaking demos,’ he became smarter too (after a few unanticipated falls) and decided that this ap- proach was all very misleading to the audience, because very few of his spectators had the skill and physical abil- ity needed to imitate him safely.
Training for all Contingencies If you are smarter, consider what the horse really needs to know in order for this first ride to happen safely for you. At the risk of repeating myself from previous articles, here is a checklist of what the horse has to become:
Demonstrated below are some of the steps taken prior to the first mounting and riding of Totil Hit, the subject of JP’s column that ran in 2015 and 2016. See The Education of Toti in our September/October 2015 issue for more detail in how they started this young stallion.
Photos by Phillip Warner and Kim Taylor 62 March/April 2017
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