Personal Narrative: My Horse

About a year and a half ago I received a phone call from Sarah, my trainer. She was rambling on about this horse saying, “he’s perfect for you” and “you need to come and see him.” When I finally went out to the barn to see him, I was shocked. He was very skinny and malnourished, his hooves were overgrown, and he had absolutely no training. As soon as I looked into his eyes, I saw a completely different side to this horse. I saw how sweet, caring, and in need of help he was. From that moment on, he was known as my horse, a horse that was going to need a lot of hard work to pay off. The first time I rode Charlie, he could only travel on a circle attached to a lunge line. He had no concept of contact on the bit and could only canter on his left lead. He was very unbalanced and lazy. My trainer was always yelling “kick, kick!” or “grab some mane!”
For the next three months, we only worked on Charlie’s forward movement, balance, contact, and his body weight. We were feeding him four or five pounds of different grains and close to ten flakes of hay a day. When it came to the riding part, I was very frustrated to say the least. He always kicked out at my leg and would buck when he didn’t want to work.. Some days I went home crying and feeling like I didn’t want to ever ride again. Thoughts of selling him ran through my mind many times, but …show more content…
He rarely would lose his balance and didn’t even think about bucking or running. We were able to create lines and courses of many different jumps for Charlie to go through. It took him a while to figure out how to use his body for the better and do the things I asked him to, but once he did, he was amazing. He would jump a course of cross rails or even fences up to three feet like he had been doing it his whole life. I never would have thought that this crazy underweight thoroughbred would become my dream