Secret Dancer is a 3 year old, unraced, Thoroughbred that came through the SPCA REHORP program. His owner believes he was previously unbacked and without consistent handling for a time, had become somewhat wild.
On our first meeting, poor Dancer was so scared that I had to use join up to even get near to him. For the first week, I slowly worked on getting him to trust me enough to allow me to touch him all over and eventually he let me clean out his feet.
Over the next two weeks, we worked on our relationship through grooming and lunging and now I can proudly say he is working very well under saddle too!
He is currently on a five day a week program including lunging, arena work, and we are trying to introduce quiet hacks too. I believe varying this sensitive and intelligent boy’s work is very important to keeping him motivated and interested, but keeping it consistent and at his own pace is also important to him feeling safe and secure.
