About 20 minutes away
Horse Training in Aguadilla
Aguadilla is the closest town to the stable in Isabela. Fifty minutes with the trailer on, which makes it the easiest place on the coast to work with.
Aguadilla is known as the city of surfing, and most people who arrive here arrive for the water. Behind the beaches there is a different Aguadilla: inland ground, quiet roads and countryside where people keep horses in the ordinary way, in a paddock behind the house rather than at a yard with a sign on the gate. Those are the horses that end up needing a month of proper work.
The shortest run I make
The program itself happens at Hacienda Los Ponce in Isabela, about 20 minutes up the road. Distance matters more than owners expect. A short haul means the horse walks off the trailer settled instead of wound up, so the first session is not spent undoing the journey. It also means a drop off does not eat your day, and that coming over partway through the four weeks to see where he has got to is a realistic thing to do rather than a plan you make and quietly drop. Isabela is home, Aguadilla is next door, and most of the rest of the northwest is inside 90 minutes towing.
Four weeks, sixteen sessions
$500 for 16 sessions over four weeks. Stable and feed are separate. Four days a week. Ground work, then manners, then listening, then riding under saddle, and a progress video every week. Any breed and any background: never started, back after time off, pushy on the rope, bucking, will not stand still to be saddled, head-shy, or completely deaf to you the moment the rope is off. The training page sets out which of those starts at which step and what the month looks like from there.
Where it starts
Out past the stalls, on a loose rope.
Leading is the step most people skip. Forward off a light feel, stop, stand, back up straight, turn, and then all of it again tomorrow. Four days a week for four weeks, until you can walk him anywhere with one hand. Everything later in the month, the saddle included, is built on top of this.
If the horse is arriving by air
Aguadilla has the region’s airport, BQN, and a horse flown in does not land at a barn. It lands at a cargo building. I meet the handler there myself, walk the horse off the crate, check the health papers and drive it on, which is what airport horse transport covers, along with SJU, MAZ and PSE. A horse that has just come off a plane is not a horse to start work on that afternoon, but BQN to the stable is a short leg, and plenty of imported horses go straight into the program once they have settled. Hauling is quoted separately from the program, up to three horses at a time, and the price comes back within 24 hours.
A Paso Fino does not get taught its gait
If you own one of the island breed, this is worth being clear about. The Puerto Rican Paso Fino’s four beat lateral gait is natural. Each hoof strikes on its own, one beat at a time, with almost no vertical movement, and the horse has it from the beginning. Paso corto is the working speed, paso largo covers ground about as fast as a canter. None of that is trainable and none of it is what a young Paso Fino is missing. What he is missing is standing still, giving to pressure, accepting the girth and paying attention to a person, and that is the same list a quarter horse gets.
Training in the other towns
In Aguadilla with a horse that needs work? Tell me what he does.
Email barefootridingpr@gmail.com or call and WhatsApp 904.705.2294. I answer within 24 hours.
