KBR Horse Net
Training Case Study:

"Gentle Ben"

Ben and James Kicker
"first contact"

Who says you can't teach an old horse new tricks?

Ted Parker liked "Gentle Ben" when he saw him at the May, 2002 Stockton wild horse adoption. What wasn't there to like? He was a big 5 year old palomino, probably the largest horse in the adoption. He was bold and a leader. He kept the other horses in the pen in line but he didn't abuse them. He would stand guard and protect the others when a wrangler would ride up and down the center alley.

Ted was worried that such a big and bold horse could be gentled. Besides that, folks say that the older horses are just wilder. We reassured Ted that this big guy had real possibilities and he took him. Ted didn't have corrals set up so he brought Ben and an other adoptee that we dubbed Rusty over to the LRTC Learning Center pens where the volunteers could help with them.

A pretty serious weather front arrived by the time we got the horses in. We were able to spend a short time with them but we had to get in out of the rain. By the time Ted arrived the following day the weather had grown even worse with thunderstorms, funnel clouds and a couple of small tornadoes sighted in the region. Nonetheless we decided to work with the horses a long as we could and we were able to spend about an hour with Ben.

Ben had a 20 foot drag line on so after desensitizing him to humans in his 20x20 pen by doing a "walkabout," we did some simple "facing up" exercises on the line. In a very short while he was curiously reaching out to sniff each one of us. Shortly afterward Ted stepped in and was able to make some nice first contact with his horse.

After a few minutes we had to give up due to the weather but we'll try to continue with this horse tomorrow.

Sequence of Ted's First Contact

Letting the horse step up

Brief touch on the nose

More movement up the nose

Closeup of Ben's quiet eye

We didn't have the camera out when we worked with Ben but several mentors were able to get into his pen and make contact. We worked on touching him in some scary places with the pole and worked with him a little bit in the round pen. Ben remained very calm and attentive.

By the end of the second day's session we could pick up his drag lead without shying, lead him to and from the round pen, do simple longeing and yielding, touch his face, and remove and attach the lead from his halter. Total working time since the adoption: about two hours.