Flame

Flame (aka Moosey) is loved dearly by us all.  She has been with us for 10 years and will be 17 years young in 2012.  Flame had a very rough and turbulent start to her ridden life and when she came to me she would turn into 'a runaway' as soon as you asked anything of her that she either didn't already know, didn't like or didn't understand, this would happen both in-hand and ridden and to be honest she was pretty dangerous to be around.  Flame is a dominant 15.2hh Welsh Section D and a real old style traditional one too, which meant that when she decided she was going in the opposite direction to where I wanted her to go there was little I could do to prevent her.  Basically she had just never been trained correctly but as the little training that she had received had been rushed she wasn't the type of horse that would hang around and think about what you were asking her either, quite frankly-if she didn't know the answer she'd runaway or run over the top of whomever or whatever was in-front of her.

Flame was the nightmare horse that everybody dreads buying, she didn't just have one little issue, she had most of the issues that nobody wants, she would drag you to the field on the end of the leadrope, not be caught, not be tied up, barged out of the stable/horsebox, bang the stable door, do 50 laps of the stable if you didn't put her out first, run over the top of you, barge out of the field gate, nap and barge out of the arena gate when you were riding, to name just a few of her little issues that she had.

So - What did I do to tame her?  TIME, TRUST & TRAINING!  Most of her problems were trust and respect issues, previous handlers had tried to get her to respect them by being too heavy handed with her but this had turned her into a run-away as they had frightened her and when she became frightened her survival instincts would switch into overload and she'd then runaway.  Over time I gained Flame's respect by being 'firm but fair' in my training techniques and the mare began to respect me and want to learn. 

In 2006 I put her in foal and in 2007 she gave birth to Moonstar- our rising 5 year old Welsh Section D filly.

Flame is a super horse but was sadly so misunderstood in her younger years.  Ayla now hacks her out and I trust the old girl to look after my daughter as she is 100% in traffic and thinks that she has a job to do when Ayla is on board.  In the past 10 years I have done a wide range of Riding Club activities with her and she always aims to please.  I am hoping that in 2012 I will be able to find the time to do more activities with her again as I really do enjoy riding her and she likes to go out and do a bit of jumping, endurance riding and dressage.