Success Stories

I have a 12-year-old appendix QH that I trail ride. He had a tendency to spook at anything when I first started riding him, but over the course of the last few years of applying what I've learned from Clinton on the RFD-TV network, we have become good partners. I received a gift of a Spook Less CD (Mounted Cowboy Shooting) last Christmas, but had not really used it, since I never ride him in reenactments. This past weekend, my Civil War reenactment group was asked to march in a Christmas Parade, and I decided that I would take Mac and at least dress him out and walk him if it appeared he could handle it. So I hauled the CD out, and played it every time I fed for a week.

I couldn't have been more surprised or pleased. Yes, he was keyed up, but I think he picked that up from me. Old time tractors, cider mills, firetrucks, Harleys, hoards of children running around screaming, it was enough to send ME into overload. I rode him up and around the grounds to keep his feet moving until it was time to start, and once the parade got underway, I think he actually enjoyed it. We certainly looked as if it was old hat to us both, but I know my horse, and I have to give credit where credit is due, and without the exposure the CD gave him, and without Clinton's matter-of-fact horse sense, I would have never attempted it, nor could Mac have gotten through it.

David Smith

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