Charlotte's Web

There’s a lot of talk these days on the net about rescuing horses that are going to slaughter and retraining them for a new home. I’m actually doing that right now and her name is Charlotte. Charlotte is a 6 year old registered APHA mare and she’s a whole lot of mess. Her one saving grace is that she is a really cute color (minimal bay tobiano) and has the biggest doe eyes I’ve seen on a stock horse. This is one sweet little gal, but she has some major downfalls – her back is slightly bowed, she’s toed out in the front and just a mess in the back and her bottom lip droops when she’s relaxed. Her mane is very course and frizzy and her tail has been eaten off (probably from the last mutant she foaled – yes someone decided she was worth breeding – oy vey!). On the positive side, she has a really nice neck and just the sweetest face. Her jog is really smooth, but her lope is still pending evaluation as it’s nothing more than a leaping gallop that breaks into a trot every other stride.

I own this mare in a partnership with my friend and we’ve decided to try to train her and resale her as a nice trail mount. My main goal with her was to practice my starting skills again so that I’ll be prepared when Art is ready for training. What I didn’t expect is to fall in love with this little mare, which is slowly happening, ride by ride. I wish I could keep the kind ones like this as I hate to send her back out there with the possibility of abuse again.

We were not sure of Charlotte’s under saddle training, so like the chicken I am, I did a ton of ground work before the initial ride. She accepted the saddle just fine, but treated the snaffle like a foreign object. I could tell that something happened in this mare’s past that made her a little afraid of people (one tip was that she has white hair on her back that are not natural spots – most likely from an ill fitted saddle rubbing her back raw), but she so wanted to be our friend that she came around to our gentle handling methods very quickly. I made sure that I was always very quiet with her and gave her a ton of praise, even for the littlest of things. When I finally stepped in the saddle, she was ready to trust me, but I still spent the first couple of rides being walked around by my friend until I felt that I could trust her not to break in half. So now, after a month or so in the round pen, we’ve ventured out into the arena and walking from the arena to the barn. Again, she has never done anything to show me that she will be silly, although we are working on getting her to pay attention to me when we’re outside the arena. The biggest problem right now is that she won’t listen to Whoa when we’re out because she’s so concerned where her buddies are that she has a hard time concentrating on me and the matter at hand. It may be a while until we hit the trails. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy each and every accomplishment we obtain. Tonight I’m going to work on getting her to lope (and stay loping) in the arena. She’s got the 100 mph trot down pat.