I took dylan out again today. Mostly the same behavior as yesterday, but today I focused more of my attention on keeping him out of my space. I'm always cautious about this with green horses because I dont really need him to fear me. Or at least I want him to fear me in a constructive way. He seems to be reasonably fond of people; and in horsey world just because they nip or kick at you, doesnt mean they arent your buddy, they just want you to back off at that moment. So he ran around on a circle for a while. He seemed to be having fun running like a crazy thing, he had happy ears and as soft an eye as a galloping horse can have. The downside to petting him after he does a good circle is that he really wants to be near me so that I'll pet him. He's not listening to me when I say whoa, he just notices me moving towards him and stops to be pet. Next time I think I'm going to be even more insistent that he stay away from me when we're lunging, since he seemed to be perfectly willing to lead after our session today. I dont like the fact that he both enters my space (dangerous) and pulls on me (painful). I think he'll learn pretty soon that he needs to go out on his circle and he needs to listen to me. I wonder how old he is. Based on his behavior I'd say late 2's or maybe 3 but hasnt been handled much.
I fit a bridle to lady and got the fleece stuff on it. She seemed less upset about this bridle but was still a little unhappy about me touching her face with it on. Not quite sure what thats about. She does it to Robert also, which means its not a personality issue. She was lame on her right front today. Not terrible but I make it a policy not to ride lame horses so I put her back when I noticed she was limping at the trot. She was very good, but verry sluggish on the lunge line. I attribute this to her feet hurting her.
Papillon was also lame. This didn't stop her from being obnoxious and hotblooded. She started to canter on her in-hand trot. Idiot.
Star, now star was a fun ride today. Long and exhausting, and the root of most of my anticipated and current soreness. I put a running martingale on her today. To explain briefly: A running martingale is basically two rings each attached to a breastplate via a leather strip. The reins run through the rings (hence the name) up to the bit as usual. With a properly fitted martingale the horse wont notice anything different when their head is where it should be. When they pull their head up, however, instead of feeling pressure on the bit from the hands, they feel it straight down, from the rings. In a snaffle bit this is quite painful, since it causes the bit to flex and the point is now up on the roof of their mouth. The harder they pull, the harder it pushes against their pallate. When they put their head back down, everything is back to normal. This martingale is too big for her. Alyssa pointed out that her head was going to have to be really high before she'll even notice its there.
Let me tell you, she noticed it was there. Star sometimes resents having to slow down. If you use your reins to ask her to slow down, she frequently throws her head up in protest, importantly she also throws her nose up even higher. You should have seen her face. Oooh boy she was pissed. Normally anger causes her to throw her head up and her nose even higher. She threw her head up a second time but let me tell you, not the third time. The other angry thing she does is lift her nose up in the air and tilt her head to the side. I didn't do anything different with my hands, I just let the rings do their job (not that there's much I could do for her really). I'm not positive about this but I think that when she did that she didn't poke herself in the middle of her pallate, I think she got poked in the side, and harder too because its lower. In any case she did not do that twice.
She did everything she could think of. In the course of an hour she had bucked, reared, kicked, stopped, spun, gave a pathetic attempt at bolting, and she tossed her head some more in the beginning. I think she was trying to break it, she broke the really old german martingale, but that was a small D-ring attached with a thin, ageing piece of elastic. Still impressive, especailly since it was on its lowest setting so she really had to throw her head in the air and hard to get much force on it. This running martingale was nothing but brand new leather and stainless steel welded into a ring. No way in hell was she going to break this, which she figured out eventually.
When her buddy left the arena then she was mad about the martingale but also mad about not being out with her buddy horse, so that added a new dynamic. I had a little more bit contact than she usually got, and more than she wanted, which didn't help matters either, but I wanted her to learn that she was going to have some contact from now on. I want to be able to push her into my hands, I can push her no problem, now I need to add the hands. So after an hour of all this she walked past the gate reasonably calmly. Alyssa, the great mediator, pointed out that this was probably good enough for today, and we needed to go feed horses. Its just as well, I was not looking forward to having to keep riding her while all the other horses were being fed and she knew it. We're going to have a few more battles of will, but I always win, and she'll remember that before long. She was definitely more balanced today, which I find encouraging.
It was also encouraging to find that all these shenanigans didn't unseat me or unnerve me to speak of. Its probably good that she didn't bolt too much. Bolting gets me, while rearing, bucking, and whatnot, are not really too bad emotionally. I'm off to the twilight rose parade thing. I hear its a lot of fun.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment