“Nuri”, a two-year old stud colt, arrived today for young horse education in our Foundations Program. The owner, elite polo player (former 10-goaler) Adam Snow, has one main goal for his horse: increased focus on the job at hand (being ridden, playing polo and general barn manners), with a decreased focus on mares and being generally distracted by hormones and stud-like tendencies.
Shortly after his arrival, I was in the barn and heard a loud bang that came from the paddock we had just turned Nuri out in. It sounded like some horse had just kicked out a fence board, which would be highly unusual for no horses had any shared fence lines. Upon investigation, there were two boards busted, apparently kicked to smithereens by this new horse. After watching him for a few minutes, my best guess is that he was investigating the fence line and wasn’t too pleased to discover the electric wire along the top of the boards that most likely shocked him. I believe he spun and kicked in response. Welcome to Dragonfly Farm Nuri, we do encourage you to express your opinion but…..
I will do my best to chart his progress via the blog and with video. Here is a link to his introduction video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-h8lCcE1Vw
After this video, I did a short session with Nuri to see where he is at and to let him move his feet a bit in the arena. He is very responsive in the Go, doesn’t take too much pressure to get his feet moving when he is loose (without a halter or lead). He is very easily distracted and wanted to change directions a fair bit (very normal for a young horse), so we have lots of room for improvement here. On the halter, he is very respectful of space, drives forward and yields his hindquarter easily when he is not worried, but is not as responsive to poll pressure as I would like and he is a bit weary of leading to new places. All of what I found today in our investigative work time is very typical for young horses. Considering this is the first time this young horse has ever left home, he is doing wonderfully and I am looking forward to continuing the work with him.