How do you prepare a colt mentally before the first ride?

Mental preparation of the colt before the first ride is the phase of the starting process that most determines how the first ride goes and what kind of horse results from the starting experience, and it consists of developing specific qualities of understanding and acceptance that translate directly into the colt's ability to manage the first ride with genuine calm rather than with suppressed fear or explosive defensiveness. The mental preparation begins in the earliest groundwork sessions — developing the colt's understanding that pressure has a clear meaning, that the correct response produces a genuine release, and that the human in its space is comprehensible and trustworthy rather than threatening and unpredictable. This foundational understanding is the basis for all subsequent mental preparation because a colt that has not genuinely developed trust in the human's communication cannot develop genuine acceptance of more demanding training elements — its apparent compliance will be suppression rather than acceptance. The specific mental preparation elements most relevant to the first ride include: the colt developing the habit of looking to the trainer for direction rather than managing its own anxiety independently; the colt demonstrating genuine acceptance of the saddle and girth rather than simply tolerating them under sustained pressure; the colt showing a quality of engaged attention to the trainer's direction during groundwork that indicates its thought is genuinely with the trainer rather than on the environment or the escape. Buck Brannaman describes looking for the colt that is genuinely focused on what the trainer is asking rather than preoccupied with its own concerns as the indicator of mental readiness — a colt whose thought is genuinely with the trainer will transfer that attention to a rider with much less disruption than one whose thought was never genuinely engaged in the first place.