ESB Golden Zone

ESB Golden Zone (or Zoney the Pony as he is affectionately known) is a 16.2hh grey 6yo gelding.
Zone came to me in march 2011. He was a lot smaller, quite sensitive and unmistakably cute. He is currently in full work preparing for his introductory level debut and going brilliantly.
When Zone first came it was clear he had talent and was a beautiful mover, but was a bit over sensitive and could get quite worried. This made him quite hard to ride as any movement I made could startle him.
I started  trying to get him used to different movements of my body, but even if he seemed to have make progress by the end of the ride it didn't seem to have stuck.
I enlisted the help of Matt Ravenhorst, a local horseman that was helping me break in another young horse. For a few weeks we just did ground work with him, first working on getting him more in tune with me and then working on 'teaching him to be brave'. Matt has a fantastic way of working with the young horses that really focuses on looking for the responses the horses are giving you. He stresses that horses learn by trying things and learn what is the correct response by the reaction the get from their rider. This method really worked. You can imagine my thrill when I was sitting on top of a horse, who previously got scared if i scratched my leg, cracking a whip while he lowered his head and licked his lips.

I started doing some jump work with Zone and he really wowed my show jump coach (Adam Wotten) and I with the raw potential he was demonstrating. Again though he was starting to over jump things because he was worried and wasn't super happy with what he was doing. Interestingly enough in cross country he didn't have the same problem. He was very settled and brave. I'm conquering the show jumping by incorporating poles and jumping into every work out. He is a lot more settled and becoming so much more rideable on the flat as well.
I couldn't be happier with the way he has progressed through these quirky little issues.

The most recent challenge that has been over come... teaching Zone to eat carrots!! He has finally decided I'm not trying to feed him poison and is now happy to receive a treat after all his hard work.