Bootz was given to me when i bought four other horses from a horse dealer in Aromas in 2003. His name was Weaver. I took him because he was beautiful and I thought I would be able to sell him once he was cleaned up.
He put me on crutches for six weeks early in our relationship. I pushed too hard about going over a little ditch, when he landed he bucked real hard and I went off.I landed standing and my knee ligament popped. It was my fault. It is always better when we don’t rush a horse into doing something he isn’t ready to do.
There are many ways to help him be ready. That is the key to the training is to make the horse ready, to make the horse so that he wants to try to do what you ask. Some believe there is a specific order to training. The truth is every horse, like us, is an individual. But he has natural instincts that are very different than ours. It is key in training to learn to see, smell, and perceive the world like a horse. Then the steps to training become easy.
Bootz’s real problem was neurological, he has head-shakers syndrome and a scar on his side that also seemed to elicit nerve pain.
Over time, that horse tried so hard for me. I think he tried so hard, i didn’t even realize sometimes that he hurt, his face hurt, the left side of his face hurt. When he would come up to me in pasture, just before he reached me, he would veer to the left, come behind (if i stood still) and present his right side. This is because he had headshakers syndrome.
I really miss him. I grew to love him very much. He got very cleaned up, so cleaned up that i could never even try to sell him.