Month: March 2021

UPDATE 03/15/21:  Today Oreo sold to a fellow from Wyoming, who is going to make a great trail partner for Oreo.  David will pass his rock-solid Kentucky Mountain Horse to his wife and he will take Oreo for his new trail horse. He is fully aware of the work that is going to be required of him to get Oreo where she needs to be and he is looking forward to many trail miles with her.

A little bit of a backstory on Oreo:

Oreo came to me in 2018 as partial payment for some services I performed for a friend. At the time, she hadn’t been used as a saddle horse for quite some time. The previous owner purchased Oreo in 2016, but never rode her and she remained at pasture on 80 acres in the mountains until I acquired her.  Due to her lack of personal touch and handling, she became difficult to catch.

I took Oreo in hand and in no time she progressed to the point that I could walk up to her in the pasture and halter her. She was a pleasure to ride, although at first she was somewhat skittish, having lived almost like a wild horse for more than a year. With a little work and a few miles in the saddle, she settled right down, her gait became smoother, and she was a pleasure to ride.  I didn’t have her long before I was approached in early 2019 by a horse owner who asked me for help in working with her horse that was in need of remedial training and was a little “too much horse” for her to handle.  As things happened, after working a little with her horse, I realized her “hard-to-handle” gelding fit my needs better than Oreo did. This owner and I ended up trading horses. She took Oreo, who fit her needs and abilities better than did her gelding.

Recently, this same owner advised me she had taken Oreo for her sister to ride, but since then her sister has given up horses.  Oreo was no longer being used and was just sitting in a pasture. She asked me to find a new home for Oreo.

As it turns out, Oreo hadn’t been ridden or handled more than a couple times in the past two years.  As a result, Oreo reverted to her former hard-to-catch ways and became a little skittish again. I have had her for a couple months now and have been putting some miles on her. She has been a “handful” at times, but is settling down nicely once again.  I have enjoyed several long trail rides on her recently (March 2021).

Oreo loves to move-out on the trail. She has a walk that will leave non-gaited horses in the dust, moving along at about 5 miles per hour. She can really cover ground. In the company of other gaited horses, she moves along smoothly in her run-walk and is easy to handle. She is a bit herd-bound, as most horses are, and she gets a little anxious when she thinks she’s being left behind. Yet, she will go out solo and does very well.  She has a canter, but I do not usually train Walkers to canter (it tends to disturb their run-walk), so I have not worked on it. Her run-walk still needs a little tune-up, but she is naturally gaited. When she speeds up, she tends to slip into a pace, but even her pace is smoother than many horses I have ridden. She has a very nice run-walk at about 6-7 miles per hour. The more miles I put on her, the better her run-walk becomes and the less she tends toward the pace.  She just needs more miles under saddle.