Broke By Sunset

NJC holds a contest every spring where 4 second year students compete against each other, and well time to "break" a horse.

Students all draw out of a hat for which horse they get at 9:00a.m.

and have to work with a halter broke horse for the remainder of the day.

This is Jeb and the horse he drew (my favorite out of the four {Lucky me}) Most of the morning was filled with "Ground work" lots of touching, rubbing, and in my words loving.
Jeb saddled and un- saddled his horse a few times, made him trot to the left then to the right... lots or repetition.

Then, Jeb made his horse lay down with the saddle on his back, and again started patting, rubbing, and "loving"

Jeb also worked a lot with his rope, making sure his horse wouldn't spook around it. He made lots of noise with it around the horse, he made the colt walk over it, and walk around it, just to get used to it.

Then Jeb SLOWLY got on his colt

Calmly

and quietly

He got on!

In the middle of the day, (lunch time) the students gave their horses a break, in the afternoon Jeb rode his horse a lot, back and forth back and forth back and forth, then at the end of the day, each student had to do a pattern around half of the arena, to show if their horse could not only walk, but trot, lope, stop, and back up too. This was the only part in the day that Jeb's horse decided to not get along with Jeb, but Jeb stayed patient and worked the little kink out of his colt. After the pattern each contestant had three minutes to show something that their horse could do.

Jeb stood up in his saddle and did a rope trick.

(too bad by this point my camera was long gone :( )

I am very proud to report that JEB WON!!!

He won a few prizes for all his hard work, which made him blush, but I was so proud of him. He was so patient with the horse he worked with all day.

I am excited for him to start training horses on a regular basis, and with more than just one day to work with them.