White Bridle Society
P. O. Box 177643 Irving, TX 75017-7643 972.740.0900
True Love's Story
April, 2011:
True Love has been in foster care for nearly two years now along with Triumph and Jose. It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to spend time with them, and we miss them but know that they’re in a good place.
We plan to keep at least two of these three horses, True Love and Triumph for our equine assisted therapy program with large horses.
True Love is much better - but still shy. He hasn’t been started under saddle, and that’s fine. We’re very impressed with his demeanor and think that he will be a great asset to our program when we get land and our certification program established.
August, 2009:
summer and is becoming a calm
horse. We can now bathe him
without him panicking. And he’ll
tip his hooves for us to pick out
his feet.
We’re going to give True another
year off before putting him under
saddle, but we’ll do more ground
work with him to help him over-
come his fears.
We’re not certain if True will ever
be a reliable riding horse,
we’re willing to give him a chance.
He may end up being a companion
horse for the rest of his life.
Whatever he has the capacity to do, we’ll stand by him. He’s been fearful since birth, and we felt that he deserved a chance.
We brought him in through another rescue that imports horses from Canada when he was a colt; so he’s been with us for a year and a half. He’s two years old.
September, 2008:
True Love has been with us for 5 months and moved from the pasture at the trainer’s to our location in Arlington 4 months ago; so we’re still getting to know this yearling colt from Canada.
Our initial opinion was that he was as wild as the wildest horse that we’ve ever brought in, and that opinion stands. He was completely dependent on the other Canadian colt, Triumph, and True would have temper tantrums if separated from Triumph. He wouldn’t let anyone touch him for the first month, and he bolted every time that he came out of his stall.
When we worked with True, he’d stand frozen in a catatonic state, and petting him resulted in tense muscles and trembling. He was simply controlled by fear.
It took nearly a month to get a halter on him and several months before he’d take a step when being lead. We still can’t put his lead line around his girth or touch any part of him in his hindquarters. But now he’ll let us comb and trim his mane and braid his forelock. And we gave him his first bath this week, and he did reasonably well.
We plan to keep True Love in the city with us for an extended period of time and wouldn’t be surprised if we ground trained him for a year or more before sending him to the trainer’s. We expect him to be a confident horse at some point in the future, but we’re letting him progress at his own pace without any grand expectations. We know that he’ll get there in his own time.
Just getting a halter on one of them is challenging enough, because they like to turn away and put their butts in our direction when we come near them with a halter.
Last week, we had a breakthrough. We’d been haltering True Love for two weeks, because he’s easier to catch, but Triumph decided that he wanted to be trained. Triumph is a dominant horse that was too dangerous to catch, so we had to wait until he came to us.
Now Triumph will walk with us at liberty and is learning the Parelli games. He’ll walk to the water station with us and let us rinse out his nostrils, groom him and do TTouches on him. And he’s let us halter him outside of the stall once.
Both horses let us trim their manes last week, and Triumph lowered his head, so we could cut a bridle path.
We have confidence that these two horses will do well in ground training this year with us, and we plan to send them to the trainer’s next year when they’re old enough to ride.
April, 2008:
Triumph and True Love are Canadian Purebred colts that we discovered on another rescue site and decided to bring in as driving horses.
We’re in the process of beginning a community outreach program and are organizing a program for children with cancer.
We intend to start out with miniature horses in the program and add driving and riding horses at some point in the future.
These two colts both have wonderful dispositions but need lots of training. They’ve had the best life possible so far and have received tender loving care from their foster care giver in Oregon.
We’ll put them in ground training for a year or more before sending them to the trainer’s.
