People say ridding horses is easy. Well they are totally wrong! You can kill yourself ridding these gracious animals. I am putting myself into that saddle and taking the risk of my life with a thousand pound animal that I am willing to bond with and trust every day. Trust. That's what they think it all is. But it's much more that. It takes trust, teamwork and the guts to work with a thousand pound animal that has a mind of it's own. A football is a football. It hits you in the head you get a small bruise. A horse hits you in the head and you go into a koma if your lucky to live from the impact of a huge hoof the size of your head crashing into you skull. Well anyways. Enough of that. Lets start with who I am. I am Alesha Danter. I work at Malibu's Dream Team Stables. the owner is Austin Fern. He has many horses at the stables and he even has a little ridding camp for children 5-18. The ridding camp is open Monday-Friday. I love it here. Some days I will help out at the ridding camp and the other days I will work at the stable helping out with the horses and cleaning. Every once and a while we will have new comers to the stables. And to be honest not all of them are perfect. Some of them need a lot of training before anyone can do anything with the horse. And this includes one chestnut mare named Raca's Ace, but for a short name we call her by both of the names and she responds to both. So anyways. She was the hardest horse that we had to train in the past five years! So it all started 8 years ago on a warm July morning when we got a call around 9:30 that a chestnut Quarter horse mare was coming in at around 12:30. So we all started to prepare. I put in new, fresh shavings into an empty stall. And then I put in A bucket of fresh water and some hay for her to munch on. We weren't really expecting her to be as bad as she was. All they told us was that she was a little skidish and that shy shied at practically everything. So at 12:25 we were all at the front of the stable watching a big black Ram truck pull up into the driveway with a white two-horse trailer with a purple streak going down both sides. As the truck pulled to a stop, a man stepped out and introduced himself to us. His name was Jason Goodman. He owned a horse facility where they help horses to trust and become a good family horse with lots of special training. Well when Raca came to their farm they thought she would be easy, but she wasn't. She was the hardest horse he had ever worked with in his life. So I guess when he gave up on her he brought her to us. After Jason introduced himself he went to the back of the trailer and backed out a gorgeous shinning chestnut mare with a bold blaze going down her face and four tall white stockings on her legs. But as soon as he back her out she reared on him and knocked him down! She reared up over and over again until Jason was able to stand back up and grab did side of her halter and calmly pet her to let her know it was ok. I had never seen a horse do that coming out of a trailer before. I could see why he gave up on her. We had Jason lead her to the empty stall half way down the barn. He put her in the stall and then walked out of the stables with us. After he said thank you and then left in his big black Ram truck. After he left me and a few other girls went to see Raca to make sure she was settling in well in which she was. The next day I was asked to take it Raca and lunge her. So I walked into the stables and opened Roca's stall door. Ravita, a a bay roan arabian mare across from Roca's stall was whinning. She was wanting to come out too. I promised her that I would tale her out on a trail ride later. After I put on Raca's halter I led her out of the stables and to the round metal coral. I replaced the lead rope with a lunging lead rope. I pushed Raca out to the outside of the coral and cracked the whip a little to make her go to a trot. She trotted at a steady pace which was a good thing. Then I served to think why she was brought here by Jason. The whole time she had been here she wasn't bad or anything. She had been so perfect. As I was thinking about this Raca started to buck a little and I cracked the whip to calm her down but before I take another breath, Raca came charging at me and threw me back 3 feet as she ran into me. I sat up in the dirt and back up against the fence and stood up. My heart was beating fast. I looked at the mare that was jumping back and fourth and rearing this way and that. Now I understood why Jason had brought her here. She was a crazy, unpredictable horse. But my question was why or how did she become like this? I stood there for about five minutes with a fast beating heart and a confused mind. I then slowly walked towards Raca after she calmed down a little. I grabbed the lunging rope and brought her back to the stables. After I left to take a breather and get some lunch. Then after lunch I went down to the stables again. It was time to train this crazy loco mare. I put on her bridle and led her out to the coral. I let her run loose for a few minutes and then I hooked her back up. I tied her to small post. I then brought over a saddle blanket and placed it upon her back. No spooking. Next was the saddle. I placed on her back. Nothing. I then had to put on the bridle. In order for me to so this I had to take off the halter. As I took off the halter I was expecting her to run off or something. But she didn't. Was this horse bipolar because it definitely seemed like it. I slipped on the western bridle and then led her over to a small box. I put her next to the box and then I stepped on it. I carefully put my foot into the stirrup and swung myself into the saddle. She jumped a little but not that much. I grabbed the reins and gave Raca a little kick to make her walk. I had set up an obstacle course in the field of random things because they said she would spook at everything. It was a windy day so a few of the things would be moving more. First I walked her past a plastic bag that was tied to a fence post. She spooked and made me nearly fall off. So I made her walk past it until she no longer spooked from it. I did the same thing with the other objects that she tended to spook at. At the end of the day, Raca wasn't spooking at half of the things that were on the obstacle course. I think that she was abused at some point because she didn't seem to have much trust in me. Especially when I was putting on the tack she was eyeballing me like a hawk and watching my every move. After a few weeks of spook training she no longer spooked at the objects. Next I was going to have to work on that bipolar temperament of hers. She would come at you at the most random moments. You never saw it coming. Like she did when I as in the coral. It took almost a year. But she finally had become the horse that I knew she really was deep down inside. A calm, sweet, loving horse. A perfect family horse. Today she is that sweet, calm, loving horse. She is a camp horse and works with the children to teach them how to ride. She enjoys it very much be here at Malubu's Dream Team Stables and She will be here until the day she goes up into the clouds.
