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YOUR HORSE LIVE EXCLUSIVE: Monty and Kelly help Your Horse readers

By Justine Thompson

General news

07 November 2008 13:37

Monty Roberts and Kelly Marks enthralled the audience when they helped Your Horse readers to load their difficult horses at Your Horse Live on Friday Morning.

The Intelligent Horsemanship duo took the two horses, Hero and Maverick, from impossible to load to easy in the space of just 40 minutes.

Helped by two of their associates, Monty and Kelly directed as both horses went into the round pen to join-up with their handlers before going through a series of exercises. These including walking over plastic sheeting, then boarded flooring, before squeezing through an ever-smaller gap between tall wire fencing.

Hero, a 12-year-old Dutch Warmblood, reared several times as he objected to the loading. His owner Mel Howard, 29, told us how she had literally spent hours trying to get him to load, even resorting to blindfolds.
“I have only owned him six months but I have researched his history and he has fallen in a trailer at least twice. He was just terrified of them,” she explained.

Within minutes of rearing however, Hero was happily walking onto the relatively steep ramp of the Intelligent Horsemanship lorry – and straight inside.

Then came crunch time as Mel was instructed how to lead Hero in and out of the lorry herself.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I just wasn’t even expecting him to follow me but he walked straight out and then back on again as if he had never had a problem in his life – but I can assure everyone watching that he certainly has.”

Mel, from Gerrards Cross, has been warned that she will have to continue the good work to ensure that Hero is always a happy loader.

But, with tears of emotion in her eyes, Mel explained that this would be a small price to pay for having Hero ‘fixed’ and being a happy loader from now on.

*Your Horse Live is at Stoneleigh Park, near Coventry, and continues with demonstrations and equestrian shopping all this weekend. For details and prices see www.yourhorselive.co.uk

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YOUR HORSE LIVE EXCLUSIVE: Monty and Kelly help Your Horse readers

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Samantha77 says

RE: YOUR HORSE LIVE EXCLUSIVE: Monty and Kelly help Your Horse readers

Hi,I can tell you as a witness that none of the horses were worked on before the demonstration. My pony, Sprite, was used on the second demonstration. I had to hack her 25 miles to get help and very nearly had to hack home too as the quick demonstration just wasnt enough time to help us out completely. Everyone's horses loaded straight onto their lorries and went after the demonstration. I had several of the team working to try and get Sprite onto the trailer but when the ramp went up she panicked and we had to get her off. We ended up coming home in Kelly's lorry with no partitions in. We have since taken the partition out of the trailer and with help from Monty's dually headcollar have got her loading though she's still very nervous at the minute. Weve been invited to another demonstration held by Kelly and the team in January to help us out further. She was definitely the worse candidate by far as we couldnt get her onto a trailer full stop before the demonstration and with a huge help from Kelly and the team (and the dually cant recommend it enough) were getting there!

24 November 2008 18:45

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Justine Thompson says

RE: YOUR HORSE LIVE EXCLUSIVE: Monty and Kelly help Your Horse readers

Hi Stephers I just wanted to say that I spoke to the grey's owner after the loading and she really was genuinely thrilled and said he was definitely an appalling loader. However, apparently they did warn her that it wouldn't all be plain sailing from there and she would still have to work at it to get him established as a good loader. Cheers Justine

24 November 2008 16:57

stephers says

RE: YOUR HORSE LIVE EXCLUSIVE: Monty and Kelly help Your Horse readers

I agree that it was very good to watch. However I would have liked to see the 2 respective owners try and load their horses first just to show the audience that they were bad loaders. We were a bit suspect that they had already worked on the grey horse before it came into the arena.

21 November 2008 20:07