Veronica’s Training Continues
Our major goal for Veronica is to help her to be responsive instead of reactive. Over the next weeks we will work to get her feeling 100% confident with the saddle before anyone needs to ride her. She is working on relaxing into a one rein stop from the ground and…
New Adventures for Barb
An update on Barb’s training progress from Kaya: Barb has been gaining new experiences on the ground and in the saddle. We took a hand walk out on the trails and have been ground working on different parts of the property. While Barb initially has many opinions and…
November Volunteer of the Month: Joan Yankis
Joan started volunteering last September on the Saturday PM team. It wasn’t long before she reached out to me and asked if it would be helpful if instead of being on a regular schedule, she could just fill in on shorthanded shifts. What?! How could this be? It is…
Finding Peace Under Saddle for Nyx
As expected, we’ve discovered some trouble in Nyx as we’ve started transitioning him back into a riding horse. It appears he may have had some “liberty” type training in his past that has left him with some resentment toward humans. This is evident in working with him…
Edward, Esme, and Jacob Updates
We are moving at a fairly good pace with Edward despite his continued breathing issues. He is still very wary about people approaching him to be caught but each time he is quickly haltered and doesn’t have the opportunity to get away, he finds the event less and less…
Good Girl Darla
Darla is a pleasure to get to know and very rewarding to work with so far. She has a huge heart and a ton of try. She was very shy and afraid coming into SAFE. Now after just a few weeks, she is more comfortable with haltering and has been walking nicely into the…
Riding Rae
Rae is coming up on her 3‑year-old birthday next week, November 1. How fast does time fly! She is just transitioning from being ridden by Joel to Terry as we come into the winter months. Over the past year, she has been worked each month in which Joel visited and…
George on the DL
George is a young and rambunctious gelding. From time to time, he thinks he should show off his smooth moves. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, his less-than-stellar aerobatic performance ended with him slipping and totally biffing it into the dirt. He got up shook it…
Darla — Ready for Adoption!
Darla is ready for her forever person to take her home! This sweet mare has so much try and she is so fun to ride. Darla has come a long ways since she was surrendered to SAFE; from hardly halterable, to confidently rideable. While Darla can still be nervous at times…
Field Report: Working with Bijou
Kirsten AL, one of our horsemanship volunteers, has been working with Bijou the past several months, and has had the following to say about their time spent together: “What a fun horse to work with! In both being a gem with a heart of gold and a challenge with her set…
Alumni Update: Karma
Karma lives on 15 acres with her 17-year-old gelding buddy Ramsey. Her adopter, Sarah, doesn’t ride her anymore, but she seems to enjoy her life hanging out with her buddy. Karma is brought into a stall for an hour each day to eat her alfalfa, then she and Ramsey go…
Alumni Update: Leonardo
Leo is doing well on a nine-acre property with his companions, Alpine and Oak. Toni (Leo’s adopter) lives and works on the property. Toni is not currently riding Leo due to school and work commitments, but she does groundwork with him, and he gets a lot of attention…
Alumni Update: George
George’s adopter says “Finally finished our round pen for George! After five weeks of terrible weather and no riding, I got on him tonight and he was an absolute gem. He was very proud of himself too!”
Training Update: Poppy moving on the Wall
Little Poppy is hard at work in our horsemanship program, learning all sorts of new tricks. Because she has likely never been saddled before, we are putting her through all the paces with that as our first major goal, but we are working on other aspects of a…
