Decided to start training
today with the aim of puttng him in a cart eventually (next week)
Good start I thought but not very well planned and totally amateur hour.
You know you just gave every driver on the forum a heart attack, right?
Leia just ain't a kidding! My mouth dropped open even before I read Leia's response! Helicopter, you are kidding, right?
Take your time! It's certainly possible to bring a horse along in a matter of weeks but not by skipping steps and mistaking tolerance for acceptance. Minis are awesome and it sounds like Raffa will be a great driving horse, but I want the two of you to be safe and happy driving partners for many years. That means he needs to really understand each step and be comfortable with it so that when things go haywire on the trail (as they eventually will) he has the practiced skills and trust in you to deal with it.
There are a lot of people out there that think that just because their mini isn't flipping out that he is "trained". There isn't anything further from the truth. If you keep going without really giving the horse time to process, the next time you work with your horse, he may show you that he really isn't as far along as you thought. We just hope that you aren't put to the cart when that happens or you will have a complete wreck on your hands and that horse may NEVER drive after that.
I have known some really great horses that were completely ruined for driving by pushing them too fast and having a wreck in the meantime. When I was quite young, my family's first "driving" horse was a result of that. He was a Quarter Horse and was really lazy
at home. After getting help from some old codger to teach him to drive, my mom entered him in a parade (he had never been in a parade even ridden), but that morning she didn't think he was ready. The other people with her thought that she was just having nerves, so they told her he would be fine. (She was less experienced than they were so she "believed" them.) Well, he wasn't fine and reared up in the shafts before the parade started, breaking the antique wooden shafts. The next day, they tried to put him in a little metal training cart and he basically wouldn't have anything to do with it and at one point had the cart on his back. He blamed that vehicle for his unpleasant experience. He never drove again. He was pushed too fast and completely ruined for driving.
I also made that mistake with a mini horse a few years ago when I didn't know any better, assuming that he was
getting it when in actuality he was just tolerating it like a lot of minis. When he bolted on us out of fear we almost had a wreck on our hands, but I somehow got him stopped before we hit the wire fence. Back to the drawing board.....
Now there are SOME mini horses we have had that had LOTS of groundwork, i.e. Halter and Showmanship work, and have come along very quickly. Knowing the difference between
getting it and
tolerating it comes with years of driving experience and working with a number of different driving horses.
Myrna