A brief story about our pony Diamond

I want to tell you the story of our pony, Diamond, who we were given about 3.5 years ago. We were told he is in his mid 20’s, he’s done lots of stuff and he can get a bit aggressive with the kids.

We were given him for my daughter and to ensure that he finishes his life with good care and never has to move again. He was overweight, had sore feet, arthritis and a very challenging attitude. He launched at my daughter in the first week we had him, which made me seriously question if we made the right decision. He had a bout of laminitis shortly after we got him, which put us into a journey of maintaining his weight.

Things were not cheap or easy but we slowly got to know him, and we realized that his behaviour was largely due to the pain he was in. The better he got in his body, the better his behaviour was. But he still had an attitude. There was another layer to uncover. We learnt the his aggressiveness is actually a fear response and that what he is scared of is high, bouncy energy, especially when there is too much going on around him.

I felt that I had an opportunity to get back to giving lessons, but this time on our own pony and on my terms, meaning I can explore better ways of teaching. It would also be a great way to cover our expenses. I didn’t know at the time that this will become the next and most exciting chapter of my life (after having kids).  But then I found myself contemplating this dilemma: "can a lesson horse be truly happy?"

In the many years I’ve been teaching, I don't think I’ve seen many horses who were truly happy. It might sound like I didn't care about that before but that's not true, I loved these horses. It's just that it wasn't up to me to make decisions about them, I did my best for them while I was working with them. But mostly, I followed the traditional way of teaching and the question of whether or not a horse is happy was never something we talked about.

So now I had my own pony, and he’s "been there, done that". But he wasn’t happy with people. it was now up to me to make all the decisions and more than anything else, I wanted to make sure that all my horses were happy! My experience with lesson horses was that they could be either grumpy or dull, hardly ever happy. I also knew what a hard job they got - taking beginners with absolutely no balance, being ridden by lots of different people without having that one special connection, and in some places being treated like machines.

Can I give lessons on this pony and keep him happy?

So I set on a goal to create a happy lesson pony, and you know what? it worked! I look at him now - the way he puts his head into the bridle (I never taught him that), the way he responds to me through the lessons and the way he responds to the kids riding him, the way he moves in the paddock, the way his body looks at his old age. It all tells me that this is a happy, healthy and sound pony.

So what did I do to achieve this?

Once we had his body in good shape, which included losing a lot of weight, a healthy diet, getting a really good hoof trimmer and supplementing for his arthritis, the next thing was to start using food rewards during the lessons. In many years of teaching, I've never used food rewards in the training and certainly not through lessons, maybe after. It was an important change, especially for this pony because he is highly motivated by food, so I knew that this was something he would be happy about. Mind you, it has to be done the right way or he could have easily turned into a cookie monster.

Next is something that I learnt from Diamond more than any other horse in my life - to teach the kids how to adjust their energy around him. The kids that come to lessons with Diamond learn how to breathe to relax their energy, how to do things slowly and how to get the feedback from the horse. He might start a lesson with pinning his ears or trying to bite and change to standing quietly for the kid, not tied up and enjoy his grooming, and then be awesome to ride (well, he does like to stop for grass but that's just part of the learning journey for the kids).

I'm so grateful for Diamond for everything that he taught me. We came such a long way in the time we had him and I couldn't be more proud of the way he is.