After years living untouched by human hands two brumbies have gone “from wild to wonderful” in the space of just 18 weeks.
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Heathcote’s Ivan Hajnal and Arden Lee have spent months training their horses to compete in the Australian Brumby Challenge at Equitana.
The challenge sees wild horses trapped in the Victorian High Country and southern NSW partnered with trainers for 150 days. Trainers then show off their progress at the annual challenge.
Once the horse Percy would not let Mr Hajnal near him, now when he sees his trainer enter the paddock he approaches him.
Mr Hajnal said Percy is now like “a nice little performance horse”.
His temperament is good, he’s performing nice stops and the like, and he’s even letting other people ride him. In fact, Mr Hajnal has trained domestic horses which have given him less good of a response.
It’s the result of 18 weeks hard work though.
It took three weeks for Mr Hajnal to be able to touch the horse.
The turning point came about a week ago when Mr Hajnal took Percy away to a camp, where a 12 year old girl was able to ride him.
“The biggest challenge would have been getting near him to touch him, he just would not let me get near him,” Mr Hajnal said.
“The rest sort of just fell into place, mainly through patience and repetition.”
Arden, Mr Hajnal’s partner’s daughter, is also “kicking goals” training yearling Titanium.
When Arden first got the horse, he was very wary of human contact. She had to use a long pole to get him comfortable with human contact.
Now Arden can tie Titanium up, lead him, pick up his feel and lung him to the left and right.
He’s doing so well that Arden was even able to take him away with her to a Pony Club camp.
It’s not about winning for Mr Hajnal, but about the challenge of training a wild horse.
The self-taught horseman had never broken a brumby before, and he wanted to see if he could do it.
“It’s not even a competition, it’s more of a personal challenge for me to be able to do this with a wild horse,” he said.
“I’m really pleased with where he’s at and what he’s doing and the responses that he’s giving me.”
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