Benefits of basic training: an example! (or two)

Karen Chaton's Enduranceridestuff Blog - Full Article

Thought I’d show a perfect example of a time when having a horse trained to not panic when he gets caught in something can be a lifesaver.

A couple of years ago I was riding Chief at the Grand Canyon XP. We had just come up a steep climb and were starting to level out. I was riding behind a small group of horses ahead of me.

That’s when I realized all of a sudden that Chief was dragging something! We had been in heavy tree cover and no one saw the wire. All it took was one strand of it to get caught, dragging the roll with it. Here is what I wrote about it at the time:

On one of the days of the ride I was riding up a new trail when Chief suddenly became entangled in barbed wire. Rusty old, nasty stuff. Chief wasn’t the first horse to get caught in it–Cheryl Johnson’s horse ahead of us got caught and got a puncture. Fortunately Chief stopped and stood perfectly still as soon as he realized he was caught and dragging a whole roll of the stuff. I quickly hopped off, told him to stay (which he did) and went to his hind legs to get it off of him. He was perfectly behaved about it and didn’t even lift a leg up until I picked it up. Good boy!

The best part was that Chief stood perfectly still – I flipped his reins over his head so that he was ground tied...

Read more here:
http://enduranceridestuff.com/blog/2011/11/benefits-basic-training/comment-page-1/