Don’t tell my wife but I think I may have falling in love again. It all happened out of the blue, I saw an ad on Facebook for a horse. I have for a long time wanted to have a horse to go out hunting on so when I saw Kim Swan had a horse for sale I jumped at the opportunity. My son Sloan his partner Natalie and I made the big trip to Blenheim to collect this horse off Kim.
The six hour trip meant that we only arrived late in the day. Just with enough daylight left for Kim to take us out for a ride on my new horse. When I first left school I worked on a dairy farm where my job was to ride the horse out to collect the cows for milking. This was almost thirty five years ago so in the time since I have only been on a horse once or twice. Kim has been a big fan of mine over the years as she has written nine hunting books about pig hunting and has giving more to the sport of pig hunting than most.
When I got to see Kim with the horse I was right in my element as I love to watch people who are good at what they do. Kim had this horse for about six months as it had come in as a dog tucker horse but Kim could see that the horse had far more to offer. The only thing missing with this horse is a name.
Kim did not know anything about her back ground so if anyone reading this has an idea for a name please let me know. My wife Janice thinks that I should call the horse waterfall after my wee mishap.
I put the horse through a couple of tests today to see how it was going to react to different situations. As yet I do not have a saddle or rains so if anyone has a saddle that they no longer want I am after one. So I lead the horse out of my holding paddock with just a lead down past my cattle yards that had two dead pigs hanging up.
It was interesting to watch her reaction as she worked out that they were dead wild pigs, she was cautious as she walked past. When I got down to the white gates I thought she was being so nice that I let the lead go as I shut the gate. Up until this point the horse had been so nice and came to me when I talked to her but all of a sudden she started walking away from me down the drive. This is where people can make a mistake of panicking and running after the horse which can make the horse run faster, instead I just walked at the same pace as the horse and caught up to her just before the road gate two hundred meters away.
In this area there is endless amount of food for a horse so I gave her plenty of time to have something to eat as we walked back up the track. When we got back up beside the cattle yards I lead her to a bit of a bank and jumped onto her back with no saddle. She performed supper well and waked up the track nicely. Our first we hurdle was the gate back into the paddock that she had come from. She was obviously expecting to go back to this gate but I wanted her to carry on up the track. Our next obstacle was a mob of sheep as she was not too sure what to do.
Another distraction that I discovered at this time was she did not like my dog Jeff following right behind her as it made her feel uncomfortable. I sent Jeff up through the sheep to make a clear passage for us to the gate. I got off her back to open the gate then I got back onto her to carry on riding up the track. At this point we had pigs on the other side of the fence to us and I could notice it in the horse. As we approached the area that I feed the pigs in the horse was getting a wee bit agitated so I got off her and let her loose as this part of the track is where I want her to spend the night so that she gets used to all of the different smells. can’t wait to see how she is thinking tomorrow.