I didn't remember that you had sent her back there and that they tried to fix her. So she must have blown up with them too then.
There are rank horses, and when you have one, you need to be able to call on those kind of trainers that can take on anything and force it to work. But I wouldn't want to start out one of mine that way... The lady that had the pony 30 days said she didn't want anyone watching the first few sessions. And I don't think it was because she was shy. I don't think she abused the pony either, she just knew we might not want to see how bad the fight can get. The only thing I KNOW she did that we didn't see was tie bags of cans to the saddle and let her run in the round pen till she exhausted herself. I can't imagine the amount of terror that caused... the risk of that pony panicking herself into really hurting herself was high. But really, it's a pretty passive solution to let her sack herself out. Better than just beating the crap out of her.
Those guys are the last chance salvage choice, when nothing else works.
To tell the truth, I wasn't real happy about Charlie riding her. I don't think Joe really put alot of effort into fixing her. He knew Charlie wanted to ride her, and I think he was worried about him. Belle went down a few times in the box.
Joe won't let anyone around when he is Fixing a horse either. I think he gets pretty rough. I know one time he bought a horse from some people we knew. This horse was really really bad about not wanting to move away from the arena gate. You'd get him a few steps and he'd rear straight up and spin around and run right back to the gate. From what I've been told Joe would never try to get the horse to move away from the gate, he just made standing by it so unpleasant, it moved away on its own, and I guess then the unpleasantness stopped.
The horse was a really pretty, nice size black and white paint. Joe landed up selling it for $12,000 as a heeling horse.
I have very mixed emotions about Joe and his methods....I've got Belle....but I've also seen him take horses like the paint and turn them around. He's hard to figure.