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http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2006/05/28/news/01rzwhisperer.txt |
| A Little Thing Called
Confidence |
| By Jaclyn Houghton |
BENTONVILLE
-- Audrey Hacker grew up riding horses, but a near-death experience
last year has left her apprehensive to retrain the horse that put her
in the hospital.
Two horse specialists began training Hacker’s
horse, Scout, at a difficult and challenging horse demonstration
Saturday, attempting to ease Hacker’s apprehension and calm the brown
and white paint horse.
“Today was a day to kind of get us back on track--get us married
again,” said Hacker, of Cane Hill.
Hacker
and her family were riding their horses to church one August day, a
once-a-month tradition for the family, when the air brakes of a passing
dump truck went off and startled Scout. The saddle went under Scout,
taking Hacker’s small, slender body with it. She was upside down and
dragged and landed on the pavement, fracturing her skull in two places.
Hacker was in the hospital three weeks and almost did not make it out
alive.
The day after her release from the hospital she was back
on the saddle, but the wife and mother has not tried to retrain Scout.
She said the two times she tried to ride Scout she was bucked off.
Tony
and Jennifer Vaught, of Kansas City, Mo., assumed the task of training
Scout and his bucking problems, as well as training an untouched
yearling and a horse with a trailer-loading problem as part of a
three-day horse demonstration clinic in Bentonville.
The couple
teach what is called a natural horsemanship technique, which teaches
horses and their owners how to communicate with one another, said
Jennifer Vaught. In the 1800s and early 1900s, a horse whisperer would
come to towns and work with problem horses, similar to the techniques
the Vaughts use. Jennifer Vaught said she does not like the term “horse
whisperer” because it sounds too mystical. She said a horse whisperer
does not come and stand by a fence and the horse is instantly trained.
Properly training a horse takes a lot of time and patience.
Tony
Vaught spent several hours teaching Scout to trust him in front of an
audience of horse lovers. He used a stick with a plastic grocery bag
attached while mounted on a horse to get Scout used to being touched by
a foreign object. Scout would twitch or buck up while he was getting
used to the bag, but after a slow introduction became more accustomed
to it.
“The main thing is you can’t rush things,” Tony Vaught
said. The approach and retreat method he used with Scout was in an
attempt to build the horse’s confidence.
Hacker said she wants to start training Scout again, but needs to find
the time to make it a priority.
“I knew he was a good horse,” she said. “I think the accident affected
him as much as me.”
Tony
Vaught of Kansas City, Mo., uses a plastic bag on the end of a riding
crop Saturday, May 27, 2006, as part of his technique to gentle a
4-year-old paint horse named "Scout" at the riding arena of Andy and
Lou Ann Devlin in Bentonville. More than a dozen local horse
enthusiasts attended the "natural horsemanship" workshop hosted by
Vaught and his wife, Jenny. |
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