I have had a love for horses and all animals since I can remember. My first rides are still some of my earliest memories, especially one on my grandpa's horses. He passed when I was young, and him leading me on "Sonny" and letting me ride his paint pony at a fair are my only real memories of him. Thankfully, I inherited his passion for horses and sense of equine adventure.
Until the last couple of years, I've been your average horse lover/pleasure rider, allowing my horses to have little bouts of bad habits here and there in trade for fun afternoons in the sun down a trusted path. I had worked with my own horses on correcting simple problems like leading too far in front or bucking in place, but otherwise I didn't take it too seriously.
It was not until I realized that J.B. (one of the most "thick-headed", "flighty" and "dangerous" horses I had ever met) was transformed through a weekend at a John Lyon's clinic in Albany that every horse is a Perfect Horse waiting for a Perfect Rider.
Starting later that year, I began working with J.B., learning John's tricks through his videos and my aunt's extensive collection of his magazines. I fell in love with the round pen basics and relationship of trust the Lyons method helps us build, even with a horse we all thought was "bad".
Eventually, I brought J.B. over to this side of the mountain to continue his training full time, and give him the attention and dicipline he had been needing his whole life. We've done lots of circles, lots of backing up and going forward and picking up our feet. He's come so far that I have really fell in love with the training time I put on him.
During that time, I've been reading every training magazine I can get ahold of, attending every clinic I can just to get a few more ideas. There are no bad ideas, just those that don't work as well as others. It's important that we remember that no one training method will work as effectively for every single horse. There are lots of them out there, and training one way (such as following Lyons, Anderson, Parelli, etc.) will probably get the job done, but the odds are you could have changed a little and gotten the same results faster and easier.
J.B. is now a horse I would confortably put children and inexperienced riders on. I'm looking forward to our future years together as partners and friends, with a trusting, respectful relationship we both benefit from.