Breakthroughs with Unbridled Dixie

My mare is full of opinions. I call her "Baby Queen" because Unbridled Dixie thinks she runs the place and we all work for her. I admire her unwavering confidence in herself and chuckle when she throws mini tantrums when she either can't do or doesn't understand a movement. She's 1,200 pounds of sassy, swanky, unbridled passion who thrives in her new structured program.

When it comes to working with and developing young sport horses, you can't just spend every day riding them and ignore everything else that goes into being a good horse citizen. Sport horses need to be able to stand quietly on cross-ties, tolerate being groomed, having their feet picked up, accept the tack, walk on a lead line, work on a lunge line, load on and off of trailers, and navigate new environments in a safe and sane manner.

Riding is only 1/3 of this sport. The other 2/3 of it is proper management, care, and preparation.

Perhaps that's why so many people give this sport up only a few years in unless they can afford a full-service operation. In the hunter/jumper world, keeping a horse in one of those operations tend to be upwards of $3,000 a month – or more than most people pay for a mortgage. While I do well for myself, I'm still fairly early in my career, which has meant that I've had to make compromises and opt to doing a lot of the work myself.

When folks learn that I own a horse, they immediately assume that means I come from money. It's a stigma I loathe about this sport, but I also understand that its a fairly common thread once you get to the A & AA rated horse shows. It's a bunch of spoiled children flaunting their parent's money on horses worth more than most people's houses. It has lost a lot of it's relatability that Harry and Snowman championed all those decades ago.

Dixie's new boarding set-up is self-service cleaning. The barn was originally built in the 70s to be a full-service breeding and sporthorse development program, not to be a boarding facility. Much of the thoughtful setup was carefully considered to accommodate young horses who demand more space than a tiny stall but not too much space that they could easily hurt themselves. Dixie now stays in one of the young horse runs, which includes an automatic waterer, a shed twice the size of a normal stall, and a good 60' of runway to stretch her legs and interact with the horses on either side of her.

Self-service cleaning means that seven days a week, 365 days a year, I am responsible for showing up and shoveling shit. I used to work for a trainer who said mucking stalls was "his therapy", and I can remember thinking back then he was full of it. But now that I am responsible to Dixie each and every day, I have found the same experience to hold true for me.

Mucking Dixie's pen on a daily basis has strengthened our bond. There is a new sense of appreciation that I feel from her, and even though she has her moments, for the most part she has really started to become a solid citizen.

From standing in cross-ties, to tolerating being braided and clipped, to being good for bubble baths - Dixie is starting to turn heads at the barn by how much her behaviors have improved in a small amount of time.

It's hard to say what went on for the first six months I owned Dixie. I put a lot of trust in people that I don't believe always did the right thing when it came to interacting with my mare. Some remnants of her dangerous, defensive behaviors remain, but we are finally starting to bury them.

"What you'll learn about bad behaviors in young horses is that they will never fully go away," Lynn said. "But what we can do is just keeping burying them deeper and deeper."

That concept hit hard for me.

When it comes to training young horses, small mistakes can mean big consequences. Sometimes, consequences that last for a lifetime. But in Dixie's new program, everyone she is surrounded by is experienced and is rooting for her.

She has started to blossom and respect the boundaries that we enforce with her. She went from wanting to fight everything to be excited about show up for her workouts.

Unbridled Dixie just needed her people to believe in her.

In life and in horses, your environment and the people you surround you with are the key to your success. Choose wisely.