Pat Parelli Proudly Presents "Colt Starting Naturally"

I thought I would type my notes from the colt starting event and share them with you:

Day 1 Session: Colts are 2 backyard Colts and Colts from Atwood Ranch, plus another colt that has been handled a bit.  
Pat explain the process of education for a horse: Taming, Starting, Foundation, Specialisation. 
Taming may happen at Birth during imprinting. It must happen before Starting. The horse has to be convinced beyond the Shadow of a doubt that you are not going to kill him.  

As Pat kept saying, horses are not scared of predators they are scared of predatory behaviour!
That is why, you can see on different occasion the colt starters kneeling down in front or on the side of their colt.


5 things you shouln't do:

1. Catch them anyway you can
2. Saddle and get on
3. Kick them to start
4. Pull them to stop
5. Pull on their mouth to turn

The skeleton of Starting a horse is the same for every horse:

1. Accept the Human
2. Accept the Saddle     
3. Accept the Rider
4. Accept the bit 

The preschool program at Atwood Ranch involve the 7 games,  bare back pad and saddle, colts have been already sat on once of twice. They are happy to have they fit trimmed. By the time they get started they are ready to ride.

Basically, the colt starting process is very similar to level 1.

• Lots of friendly using the tools: Carrot stick and line.
• Rubbing horse legs, pick feet
• Disengaging HQ. 
• Whenever your horse turn and face you, walk away

Pat set the colt starters 5 tasks for this session:

• Green ball on back  
• Stand and walk on tarp
• Jump barrels
• Front feet on pedestal
• Load in trailer.

Once the colts have accepted the human on the ground then the colt starters jump across their backs. They have to lift the hand that holds the line to stop the drift. With their other hand they rub the colt other flank where they leg will be once they sit astride. That looked really hard! The next steps are to swing legs, then lie down with knees together, kneel or stand on colt, then sit astride. Walk bend stop relax! How do you keep your energy down and stay relax? This, I really don't know. I think my heart would be racing and I would be full of adrenaline by this stage!

A similar process is repeated first with the bare back pad then the saddle. The cinch is progressively tightened. First no cinched at all till the horse can relax then move to the next step.



By the end of this session, most colts had accepted the rider!