Tuben's story

Tuben’s Story

Our journey together began on the 19^th September 2012 when Tuben came ‘home’ to the livery yard as our first horse in a mother/daughter share relationship.  My daughter Kate was 14 and had been riding for 2 years and whilst I had horse riding and loaning experience, I had taken a break from horses for over 20 years but it felt like the most natural thing in the world to do.  Tuben was advertised as an Irish Draught cross, lightweight hunter, who was 5 rising 6 years i.e.  green but sound with the basics and needing to be ‘brought on’.  Whilst I had reservations about a young horse, bringing one on felt different to training a youngster.  

However, once home things began to unravel.  It quickly became apparent that Tuben was very anxious about most things and struggled to pick his front feet up for us, he couldn’t stand still to be groomed, tensed if anyone on the yard raised their voice, didn’t like anyone to be inside the stable with him and became so anxious whilst being ridden it was unsafe for my daughter to ride him. The joy at owning a horse morphed into a new reality; had we done the right thing?  My gut feeling was that we had a really good horse but I felt overwhelmed with the myriad of problems and I felt that I simply hadn’t the skills to manage this situation.   However, we decided to take him out of ridden work and establish if the problem was pain, so we had a back, tack and teeth check and contacted Intelligent Horsemanship for some practical help.  

Our vet quickly established that he was more like 4½ rather than rising 6yrs, Alison Dochertaigh of Holistic Horse Help found that he had pain in his poll and neck but it was completely manageable and was the first person to speak beautiful words of support and encouragement to us, fortunately his saddle fit well and the lovely Linda Ruffle of Intelligent Horsemanship began our journey of repair and learning. Almost 12 months on we have learned so very much, Tuben is a superstar and it has become blindingly obvious that he hadn’t had much of an education and simply didn’t understand what was expected of him.  He is a really bright boy with a fabulous future ahead of him and currently Carrie Adams, also of Intelligent Horsemanship, is re-schooling him and he is coming on in leaps and bounds.  Kate and I are so immensely proud of him and looking forwards to building a ridden relationship with him; we feel like we are on the edge of something big!

I would not hesitate in recommending Intelligent Horsemanship and Holistic Horse help as their practical support and words of encouragement have been invaluable to us.