Using the “Bob Vila” example, I would point out to you that even Bob doesn’t take on every house he sees. First, he carefully examines the “bones” of the structure to determine if the job is worth his time. The same is true with horses. If you are a trained, talented, well mileaged rider, you can look over a horse and quickly decide whether or not the animal is worth your time and energy. As a professionally trained horseman, I always look for the fundamental soundness of the animal first. After that, and equally important in my mind is the character of the animal. Anything else after that, I can teach to the horse, but I can’t fix a horse that is physically wrecked and I can’t change the basic character of an animal anymore than I can change the basic character of a person.

Character changes are one of the few areas that are completely in the hands of the individual. I’m sure everyone has met someone in his or her life that was a complete jerk. As you well know, all the begging, pleading and threatening in the world didn’t change that person at the core of their being. The only person powerful enough to make that change was the individual themselves. The same is true of horses and here is a perfect example of what I am talking about:

I met a woman in California who was in her 50’s. She decided that she wanted to do endurance riding on a more serious level. Her present mount was a very suitable, kind, generous, trustworthy Quarter Horse cross mare, but she had been convinced by the other competitors that in order to be competitive, she would have to buy an Arabian. Although the woman had ridden for many years, she had limited experience with Arabians and little or no formal training as a rider.

She bought a green broke, young Arabian horse that was sold to her as a perfect endurance prospect. Prospect means the horse is unproven, but has demonstrated talents that might be suitable for that line of work. After owning the horse for a few months, she asked if she could bring the horse to our home for a month or two because her fields at home were too muddy. We agreed and the horse arrived a few days later. I quietly watched the horse after warning the owner that there was a live strand of hot wire running around the entire field at the top of the fence. Of course, there had been plenty of horses in that field before who never touched the hot wire and others who did touch the strand one time, jumped back a step and then went on about their business of eating grass.