Koda & I

I started calling around for horses for sale, I was looking for a breed in particular: A Marwari. My first hit was a success, a stable in Bangalore had an 8 year old gelding for sale. So I called up Isa and her being as exited as me, left together to take a look at the horse.

We had arrived a bit too early at the riding school, so we went and looked for the horse, after spotting him by himself in a small dirt corral, we played so games with his to explore his personality.

During the test ride the decision was made, he would be coming to live with us but since the building of the stable in Tiruvannamalai wasn’t complete yet we agreed to keep him boarded at the current place in Bangalore.

When we were on our way back to Tiruvannamalai, a new name for him was found: Koda (meaning: friend, in Native American)

Around min december Isa and me went to pick him up. We rode him a bit before loading him into the the truck, so to get his extra energy out. He was being fed oats and kept in a small stall all day, so you can imagine he had some energy to get out. When the truck was ready Isa tried to load him using Natural horsemanship methods patience and trust. after a few tries she got him in the truck and turned him around all was good until the previous owner and her grooms came up quickly to shut him in the truck. That’s when he freaked and bolted. Of-course he wouldn’t go into the truck anymore after that. We left the traditional horse people do their thing, and they give him a strong drug, and finally they got him loaded and me and Isa got in the back of the truck with him. And then we started on the 8 hour trip in the night to Tiru (we were traveling at night because in the day it would have been too hot).

At about half an hour into the ride the drug started wearing off and Koda got really freaked out, me and Isa had to do a meditation for about half and hour before he calmed down and because he was facing backwards to the rear traffic, we had to blindfold him while were driving through the city. Only t about 3 hours into the ride he finally got into some kind of trance, too tired to care, and finally me and Isa could sleep. When we arrived in Tiru we unloaded him at 4 am in the dark an put him in his stall. We would wait till the morning to introduce him to Majura.

The next morning we put them together and looked on as they figured out the dominance. From now on everything went great! An we started trimming his feet the natural way. And started building his neck muscles with various exercises. We got him used to the country side and he calmed down very quickly, learning from Majura. We had loads of fun and interesting experiences! And we found out he can jump as well.

---