I want to apologize for my lack of posts lately.
Here are the facts.
Chev's shoes were pulled 2 weeks ago, and she has been recovering. Before pulling the shoes, farrier and I went on a trail ride on the back roads. Chev was alert, but well behaved. She didn't care about cars. She didn't scream. I realized I need to ride with longer fenders to avoid ankle pain. It was a success.
She has essentially been a pasture puff for the last 2 weeks. I've been going out at least once a day to check on her, feed her dinner, lunge her a bit, do a small amount of groundwork, and generally assess her condition for returning to work.
Work and horses is such a funny thing.
I think "work" is the perfect word.
It is always a work in progress.
The goal is to have something meaningful happen in a forward direction every time we ride.
I try not to harbor grand illusions about what that has to be.
My horse is fairly well "schooled", three days away from her seventh birthday--she walks, jogs, trots, and canters with relative ease and minimal cues, moves her body off slight leg pressure, understands turn arounds, side passes and two-tracking (mostly), and is pretty sensible to ride. She is not exceedingly silly under saddle. She is not a spooker, bolter, or bucker.
I have a lot to be thankful for. She's taken my attempts at training gracefully, forgives my blunders, and is generous with her amount of try. She isn't the most talented horse, but she is honest.
What I really want her to be is more of a "broke" horse.
I got the good idea about a week ago to hop on her bareback in the halter and ride her around the perimeter of the fence.
Boy howdy, that was a bad idea.
I guess I still have this romantic notion from my childhood that you can just scramble up on your horse, and ride off--no gear, no worries.
That is just not reality.
We got to one corner of the pasture before she starting pitching.
I admit it--I was scared. For a couple minutes anyway. I flashed back to that video of the large grey horse rearing full throttle straight up in the air while his rider hung on for dear life. I grabbed mane. I waited her out as she popped up over and over again.
The weird thing was how balanced it all felt. She was not trying to unseat me.
After initial anger...I realized her feet hurt.
Then I felt like an idiot.
She was going about it in the loudest way possible without being dangerous. She has never done anything like that before or since.
So I walked her over a few feet, still mounted, so I didn't look intimidated by what she'd just done--even though I was, but I'm still the boss here--dismounted, told her I got it loud and clear and turned her out for another week.
Yesterday after a good looking lunging session, I threw my bareback pad and bridle on her and took her for an easy walk around the pasture to check my fence. No hesitation, no complaints.
Her feet are just about ready.
I just needed to listen to what she had to say.
And that brings me back to the beginning of this post: reasonable expectations.
I think it's almost human nature to set goals, and when goals are reached more quickly than we expected, to immediately set higher goals, over and over, ad nauseam, until we inevitably fail.
"We're just going to try 2' today," rider with her green jumper says. Horse pops over it with no problems, because he's been set up with a task he can easily succeed in. "Well that was easy...let's try 2'6"." And on and on. And before you know it, you've got a horse that won't jump a cross rail.
"We'll just do one canter depart." Horse departs well and canters smoothly. "Well that was easy...we'll just do another, and canter a few laps this time." And before you know it, you have a horse that balks at the depart, swishes her tail, kicks to the inside or outside, and doesn't canter at all.
With horse training, the bar has to be low until the horse is confident in what he can do and how you ask. That's not to say there aren't times to push it--if you've been cantering 3 laps for a week, it's okay to step up to 6 laps, or whatever--but many of us (yours truly included!) push too hard too fast, which sets everyone up to fail.
One of the things I've had to learn the hard way was really setting the horse up to succeed.
It seems like a lot of riders I watch set their horses up to fail just so they can punish them. They ask for the canter depart just so they can crank their horses back to a stop.
Boy--I would hate to be that horse.
It really gives me some admiration for what they put up with from us.
I strive to be fair. And setting them up for punishment sure isn't fair.
An honest horse will try to give you an honest answer. He'll shake his head, position his ears and move his body in ways he hopes communicate to you what is going on. He'll give or brace to pressure. He'll choose to listen to you or try to get you to listen to him. The trick is figuring out how to read the signs and what they mean--and it's different for each horse, even though they share a basic language. I believe this is at the heart of developing "feel".
And now, a laugh the hunter/jumpers will appreciate...(click to enlarge)!
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