(no subject)

[which_chick]

I'm sunburned. This is because I spent the entire day (temp and humidity over 80) outside. There were intermittant downpours breaking up the heat and upping the humidity to unbearable levels. I got rained on, solidly, twice.



The 4-H roundup thing was today. This is the first of three horse show things for which I've been coaching Cass and Chelsea. They got a first (against nine other people!) in Walk-Trot pleasure. They got a fifth in Walk-Trot equitation. Cass attempted the trail class and, while she did not place, she BACKED THE L PATTERN and DID THE 360 ON THE FOREHAND, both skills that she did correctly. (Her 360 was to the left and they wanted one to the right but it was a complicated pattern and she's eight. I'm not complaining at all.)

So, y'know, that went well, mostly, at least until Cass fell off the pony in poles. *sigh* Nobody was hurt, though, so we proceeded onward and when the thing was over, we went back home, picked up Sphinx and the IRH and went to Sylvan Glen, a local open gaming venue.

At Sylvan Glen, I spent twenty bucks taking the IRH in classes. We did poles, barrels, flag race, and four corner stake, none of which we placed in and ALL of which we correctly completed the pattern in. The IRH is doing quite well with the whole going-to-horse-shows thing and we actually loped part of the run home in the patterns without anything bad happening, so yay! (Up to this point, we've been just walking and trotting. I've never actually asked the IRH to lope for me before this, though she had, once or twice, following another horse, without anything untoward happening. I have absolutely no idea how much speed she's actually got but I assure you that we're nowhere near the top of her abilities just yet.) It was a lot of fun for twenty bucks and there was a thunderstorm (with thunder) and umbrellas and rain slickers and all kinds of excitement for the horse. (At horse shows, when it thunderstorms, you hunker down out of the weather and wait for the rain to pass. Horse people are pretty hardy souls.) She weathered all of that nicely. I'm going to have to stop calling her the Insane Red Horse if this keeps up...

There is apparently another Sylvan Glen thing in July. I'm thinking I'd like to go to that. It's a lot of entertainment value for the money.

Comments

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

I have not had a chance to read back through all of your posts yet.

Why is the IRH insane?

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

When Nick (the Insane Red Horse) was a long yearling and we went to move her from the farm to the house, we caught her and got a halter on her and tried to lead her out of the field at the farm. Most horses, by the time they are a year old, do not turn tail and DRAG PEOPLE THROUGH THE FIELD until the dragee has the good sense to let go of the rope. I'm not a fan of dirt-surfing, so I let go of the rope pretty early on, but it was still somewhat disconcerting.

When she was a two-year-old, someone (not me) tied her to a two-horse trailer. Now, the two-horse trailer wasn't attached to anything else. It was just sitting there. Most two-year-olds tie well enough that they don't pull back, even if they're upset. The two-year-olds that DO pull back don't pull back enough to move a two-horse trailer from one side of the driveway to the other. (It's a big driveway turnaround thing, sort of triangular.) I'd like to point out that the IRH managed this without damaging herself or the trailer. It's a very special breed of insanity that she has.

She's been afraid of motor vehicle traffic for as long as I have known her. That's frantically, life-or-death afraid, not just a little nervous. Most horses I have known don't get too wound up by ordinary cars, but the IRH does. She doesn't get wound up about motor vehicles (specifically, the big green John Deer tractor) in the field with her, delivering round bales... only traffic on the road. We're working on this and she is improving, slowly. This is why much is made of motor vehicle traffic on rides -- it's an area of special concern for us.

When we were working in the round pen two years ago, she went through it. The round pen is made out of 3 horizontal boards of 1" thick oak, nailed on the inside of the posts. The top board is about four and a half feet high. It looks very sturdy (looking sturdy is half the battle with normal horses) and it IS very sturdy. I did not have a rope on the IRH at the time, nor was I hitting or touching her in any way. She was completely loose and free, not too pressed about anything, and about ten feet from my body when she went through the round pen. It was quite deliberate. She went to the middle of the boards, almost exactly between two posts. She reared back on her hind legs, and she kind of leapt forward to hit the fence square with her chest, pushing through the boards (snapping them in half, all three of them) and leaving. I have never heard of another horse doing that to a solid wood fence. (She was sane and unhurt when we caught up with her... again, it's a very special breed of insanity.)

I have pretty much always wanted to break a horse to ride, by myself, from scratch. When I got around to starting on that project, I went into the field and picked something. I had permission to work with anything, as long as it wasn't already someone's special project horse, and Nick was the horse I picked. I like her. I like her a lot, probably beyond reason. Every time I look at her, she is beautiful. There is only one other horse in the world that I feel like that about and I already own that one.

I do not own Nick. She belongs to La's mother, who boards Meatly. I do have the right of first refusal if the IRH goes up for sale (unlikely) and I get the chance to buy her at a price equal to that offered by any other buyer should one materialize out of the woodwork. The market for marginally rideable Arab mares of medium age and extremely uncertain temper isn't that huge, so I'm not overly worried about my lack of ownership.