The Mustang Diaries: Axl and Peaches - First Saddling

Axl and Peaches have been progressing in tandem over the last few weeks and have recently shared one of the most profound milestones in a colt's life: their first saddling. An experience that can either be an incredible step in the foundation of a horse's education or a traumatic disaster, leaving substantial fear and bruised egos in its wake. Thankfully, Axl and Peaches have had extensive groundwork to prepare them for this day, and I would not have progressed onward to saddling if I felt the experience was going to be a negative one for them.

Peaches required patience and reassurance to get through the act of placing the saddle and tightening the girth. I had a conversation with her explaining it wasn't here to cause pain or fear, and she believed me until she bubbled up and it became visibly overwhelming for her. Her body tensed, her head rose, and her eyes flashed white. She was seconds away from pure panic, so instead of using force and letting her battle it out alone, I listened to her... I simply removed the saddle and the pad, calmed her down, and started again. Giving her another opportunity to see for herself that the saddle wasn't the enemy. Once it was on her and the girth was tightened, perhaps she replayed my words of assurance in her mind, as she did not have another moment of fear the remainder of the lesson.

Unlike Peaches, Axl paid no homage to the pad, the saddle’s weight, or the tightening of the girth and in that he offered a kind of honesty—a blunt truth that said: I am who I am, and you will not bend me by force. There was something almost comic in his matter-of-fact calm, a stallion’s blunt confidence that did not need approval to exist in the world. He did not care one bit about what the saddle might symbolize; he cared only about the next moment and the one after that.