Cute show, but as other have pointed out, the producers should have talked to actual horse people, because no one on this show, especially the so called "professionals" know squat about training one.
I can buy that the "wild" horse could bond with the inexperienced main character, Zoe -- any horse would sense right off that she wants nothing from them so they'd be intrigued and even feel safer with such a person, especially if they've been abused. Or even that she is a natural rider, without having had any official training or actual experience. Achieving more in a couple of weeks than others might do in years, I was one myself. BTW... it's highly unlikely that Raven is a stallion - don't need to be one to not trust humans - or act wild. lol. The horse would have to have quite a pedigree in order to not have been "cut" already and looking at how this horse moves, he's got too many conformation drawbacks that you wouldn't want to perpetuate through breeding.
I love the cross section of horses shown (especially, Bob and his awesome leg feathers). It is quite indicative of the location and beautiful to obverse. The location itself is also lovely. But for starters, no one who knows anything about training horses would try to lunge an inexperienced or scared one in a big open space, especially one as unpredictable as Raven; where a) the horse is more easily distracted; and b) there's so much space for it to "run out" in and avoid learning anything at all. Along the same lines, you wouldn't try to saddle one for the first time by choice in a big open paddock. In fact, they should have been rubbing this horse down with towels, blankets, saddle pads, etc in a confined space from the beginning to get it used to the tack and being just touched and handled, not just suddenly throwing it at the poor guy a year later out of the blue. And the list goes on... a lot of basic stuff that a truly professional trainer, or even just experienced horse people would know about. In general, other that the horse is black and pretty (which by themselves does not get you very far in a competition), the writers give no clue as to why the owners even want to keep this particular horse in spite of all of it's problems. It's never been fully trained for riding, so they haven't a clue as to it's potential, and the girl who owns him is hardly the sentimental type. Even his behaviour isn't consistent. Horses that are freaked around people are freaked pretty much all of the time when around people -- or loud, busy surroundings -- not selectively as this one is -- well unless they've been encouraged to be drama kings by people around them who are inconsistent and/or don't know what they're doing.
If you love horses, have kids who love horses, and want to learn how to actually handle them, gain their trust, do yourselves a favour and watch a show like Heartland instead. It too is family oriented, well written, charming, beautifully filmed, funny, sad, not predictable, thinks outside of the box, the age group starts out about the same as this show -- and the writers have actually done their research where the horses themselves are concerned. Stick with Free Rein for the cute teen story line, but overall don't do what they do with the horses. You'll either get badly hurt, or badly hurt the horse, psychologically, if not physically. They pretty much only learn bad behaviour if we teach it to them, or don't teach them properly to begin with.
