Horse Information - Path of The Horse

This story is about a horse named, Serpico. Now, Serpico was an Arabian gelding that I purchased at auction and he was just an absolutely beautiful Arabian. He was 16 hands, black liver chestnut, just gorgeous and we actually got him for very little money.

This didn’t make sense because he was such a nice horse but after we got him home, we started to get calls saying, “How is Serpico?” and “Are you okay?” And I would say, “Ooh, he’s doing wonderfully and is such a great horse.” But we got more and more calls asking about Serpico, so I asked one of the callers why they were asking.

Well, we found out that on the auction floor the day before we bought him, Serpico had broken and run away from a fabulous trainer, whom no horse had ever intimated before. In fact, Serpico had broken his arm and attacked another horse, so he was considered a complete outlaw.

When I saw him in the auction, I knew nothing about the story, bought him and thought he was just wonderful. Serpico gave us no problems and the reason that he didn’t was because we never asked him to do anything that he didn’t want to do nor did he feel threatened.

When I found all this out, I started taking a real interest in getting to know Serpico very well. One of the things that I would do with him was to visit him at night, at maybe 2 am, just to see how he was. From those visits, I learned a couple of things. I learned to teach a horse to lie down and I learned it’s good to visit and handle a difficult horse at night rather than during the daytime. For some reason, at that time of night, horses are very, very friendly and happy to see you. I have used that method to train horses from that time on, particularly aggressive horses, because it’s just an absolutely fabulous way of taking a mean horse and making him sweet and tractable.

So when I used to go out at 2 am, I found that Serpico was always lying down. I used to take him a bowl of water mixed with a little wine and honey and I would put it under his little nose to drink.

This went on for a while and I realized I had an opportunity to teach thishorse to lie down. So I started going out a little earlier, at maybe 1:30 am, and sure enough he had not laid down yet. I went to him with my bowl of water, wine and honey and he looked at me as if to say, “It must be time for my nightcap.” I looked at him and said, “No, you can’t have that wine until you lie down.” and he did because that was our routine.

So you see how you can use little tricks like this, combined with routine, to help train your horse.

To learn more about Carolyn, her lifelong relationship with the horses and her quest to findthe ideal communication method between man and horse, visit Carolyn Resnick's siteand read her book Naked Liberty published in English and German (Tochter Der Mustangs –Daughter of the Mustangs).

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