If one makes money from giving lessons about horse training and horsemanship, one can call himself a professional horse trainer, correct? Well, I've given my first paid lesson. Technically, or otherwise, I'll take it.
Rebecca and I met at the Obstacle Challenge mentioned in the last post. She asked if I would help her and I gave her my standard consulting proposal: "We'll meet up and work with your horse, if you like what you see and want more, we'll agree on a price. If not, no harm done."
The first meeting was a couple of weeks ago. She has a Mustang that she has had since it was 6 months old. It was orphaned and she has raised Dixie who is now I think, seven. Dixie is a good horse. A little pushy like you might say many orphans are inclined to be. She's had a number of different trainers. Rebecca has gathered a lot of advice from many of them. Her knowledge is not organized in any way.
Today we went through the first seven groundwork exercises. It helped getting Dixie's attention. Rebecca was taking her out on a group ride this afternoon. Dixie didn't want to go through the gate to the trailer. We fixed that.
We worked on flexing and hindquarter yielding. We did some lunging for respect stage one and backing up. All in all it was a good little lesson. I think Rebecca got her money's worth. I got to face the challenges of teaching someone a method that was a bit foreign to them. More importantly, I was able to work with another horse and put that experience under my belt. Not to mention that technically, I earned my professional's wings.
