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Oct. 22nd, 2004 12:20 pmHorse morning -- the rain obligingly didn't pour down on me even though it threatened quite a bit and the wide spot in the driveway (where we work -- I realize "pro" horse trainers have round pens and such, and I have a round pen too, but last time I put Nick in it, the SOB went through three 1" oak boards, deliberately and with intent) was a mudhole. Mezcal obliged by remembering the thing about the feet (yay!) and demonstrating her near-mastery of the back-foot request thing. I still haven't DONE anything with them besides pick them up, but that's going quite well and I should be able to pick them out by the end of the weekend. After that, we'll start on "shoeing simulation" practice. Horse feet get moved around a fair amount in the process of putting shoes on them, and we'll need to do that before we're done. A little at a time... We also did pad and saddle, to absolutely no fanfare. She took it all surprisingly well. I didn't run her around much because she came out of the field slightly lame on the left front (no obvious heat or swelling -- she's got crappy feet and probably has a stone bruise somewhere) so we minimized movement to not exacerbate that. I was thrilled she remembered the part about not moving the other feet, so that was a success.
Nick was pissy today, and I don't know why or what her problem was. She was touchy on the left hip, but no swelling or heat, not like she'd been kicked. She moved out sound on circles to the left and right (horses, if lame, show it more obviously when trotted in circles than in straight lines), so that wasn't it. No clue, really, what the bitchiness was about. We did some yields, which went okay but not great... she was giving me attitude about it. I can tolerate some cranky, but this was more than average.
We went playing in traffic, where there was a big, exciting bucket loader and huge covered truck (bigger than a pickup -- multiaxle, not quite a huge PennDOT dumptruck). She lost her mind. (There's a great big huge field right next to the road we play in traffic on, so that if she needs to lose her mind, she has room to do it in without getting run over. I imagine getting run over would pretty much ruin our progress towards traffic-safe.) *sigh* Not a good traffic day, so we headed home. On the way, there was a lot of stupidity and running over me (she's not supposed to get her head all that far in front of my shoulder -- and when she bulls ahead, not listening to me, that's not good) for no reason I could determine. So, when I got to the driveway, we didn't turn in because I was pissed. Serendipitously, the evil bucket loader and accompanying covered truck were on the top of the hill, loading a chopped corn product into the truck from the huge plastic-wrapped worms in Max's field.
There's nothing like a shitty day where one's horse is being a complete bitch for a learning opportunity. We headed up the dirt track through the field so that we could get to where the machinery was without trampling crops. She was not pleased. At all. She was intensely not pleased. She danced. She snorted and turned tail, only to hit the end of the rope and swing back around. We approached the machinery very slowly, with pauses in between our advances to do circles and yielding hindquarters and backing up and stuff. This is kindergarten-level activity -- she doesn't have to think much to get the right answer and handling it helps her settle down a little. My, did the bitchiness show up! She stood on her hind legs. She bucked. She bucked and *swung at me* with a hind foot. She pinned her ears and wrinkled her lip (prelude to biting) at me. She was an unhappy camper... but she wasn't all that terrified. She was on a slack rope, held there without much stress on my body. She was mad because I wouldn't let her eat, mad because I wanted her to work near scary machinery, mad because I wouldn't let her get away with disrespectful bullshit (Feel like bucking and taking a swing at me? Fine. Back the hell up, bitch. Twenty, thirty feet. Back up QUICKLY. Look nice at me, like you want to stop backing up... then we'll stop, take a deep breath, and try it again.) and mad because I wouldn't back down. (Side note: She's really, really cute when she's 3" taller than normal and doing her springy really-pissed/really-nervous trot. Really cute. Damn gorgeous, actually.)
Notes to self: Yielding hindquarters is more effective at settling her hash than having her circle. She tunes out too easily on circles. Circles with frequent (less than halfway around, per direction) changes of direction are MUCH better than just plain circles. If she bulls into you on the machinery side, you're too close to the action for her to handle it. Back it up twenty feet and try again.
End result? After an excessive amount of stupidity, she stood quietly, head at a normal height, eyes quiet, ears forward, all four feet still, big drape in the lead, and watched the bucket loader guy (20 feet away) back and fill and scoop, advance and lift and dump and flop the bucket (clankity clankity clankity)... just like her IQ was normal. We didn't get closer because that was about as close as I figured she could be and not explode. I want her to win, to go 'Oh, that's not so bad'... so I try to make the goals achieveable. GOOD horse. I told her so. We headed home, and she still bulled past me... so we did the figure-8 response. She bulls forward past me, I stop and pay out line (the lead is 12' long) while she circles around to face me, goes past me the OTHER way, turns around again, and is then positioned to continue walking like a good horse (her path makes a figure 8), whereupon I continue walking as if she hadn't done something wrong. Six or so repeats of that, and she was happy to stay with her head at my shoulder, like a normal horse. We saw one car, crossing the hard road back to home, and she kept her feet still. I petted her and told her she was a good horse. She looked thoughtful and chewed, which I hope means we've made a teeny amount of progress.
For the non-horsey audience: What's the deal with the chewing? Horse brains are wired to the jaws. If the jaws are working without any eating going on, the mind is in gear. It's like the little hourglass thing in Windows.
Nick was pissy today, and I don't know why or what her problem was. She was touchy on the left hip, but no swelling or heat, not like she'd been kicked. She moved out sound on circles to the left and right (horses, if lame, show it more obviously when trotted in circles than in straight lines), so that wasn't it. No clue, really, what the bitchiness was about. We did some yields, which went okay but not great... she was giving me attitude about it. I can tolerate some cranky, but this was more than average.
We went playing in traffic, where there was a big, exciting bucket loader and huge covered truck (bigger than a pickup -- multiaxle, not quite a huge PennDOT dumptruck). She lost her mind. (There's a great big huge field right next to the road we play in traffic on, so that if she needs to lose her mind, she has room to do it in without getting run over. I imagine getting run over would pretty much ruin our progress towards traffic-safe.) *sigh* Not a good traffic day, so we headed home. On the way, there was a lot of stupidity and running over me (she's not supposed to get her head all that far in front of my shoulder -- and when she bulls ahead, not listening to me, that's not good) for no reason I could determine. So, when I got to the driveway, we didn't turn in because I was pissed. Serendipitously, the evil bucket loader and accompanying covered truck were on the top of the hill, loading a chopped corn product into the truck from the huge plastic-wrapped worms in Max's field.
There's nothing like a shitty day where one's horse is being a complete bitch for a learning opportunity. We headed up the dirt track through the field so that we could get to where the machinery was without trampling crops. She was not pleased. At all. She was intensely not pleased. She danced. She snorted and turned tail, only to hit the end of the rope and swing back around. We approached the machinery very slowly, with pauses in between our advances to do circles and yielding hindquarters and backing up and stuff. This is kindergarten-level activity -- she doesn't have to think much to get the right answer and handling it helps her settle down a little. My, did the bitchiness show up! She stood on her hind legs. She bucked. She bucked and *swung at me* with a hind foot. She pinned her ears and wrinkled her lip (prelude to biting) at me. She was an unhappy camper... but she wasn't all that terrified. She was on a slack rope, held there without much stress on my body. She was mad because I wouldn't let her eat, mad because I wanted her to work near scary machinery, mad because I wouldn't let her get away with disrespectful bullshit (Feel like bucking and taking a swing at me? Fine. Back the hell up, bitch. Twenty, thirty feet. Back up QUICKLY. Look nice at me, like you want to stop backing up... then we'll stop, take a deep breath, and try it again.) and mad because I wouldn't back down. (Side note: She's really, really cute when she's 3" taller than normal and doing her springy really-pissed/really-nervous trot. Really cute. Damn gorgeous, actually.)
Notes to self: Yielding hindquarters is more effective at settling her hash than having her circle. She tunes out too easily on circles. Circles with frequent (less than halfway around, per direction) changes of direction are MUCH better than just plain circles. If she bulls into you on the machinery side, you're too close to the action for her to handle it. Back it up twenty feet and try again.
End result? After an excessive amount of stupidity, she stood quietly, head at a normal height, eyes quiet, ears forward, all four feet still, big drape in the lead, and watched the bucket loader guy (20 feet away) back and fill and scoop, advance and lift and dump and flop the bucket (clankity clankity clankity)... just like her IQ was normal. We didn't get closer because that was about as close as I figured she could be and not explode. I want her to win, to go 'Oh, that's not so bad'... so I try to make the goals achieveable. GOOD horse. I told her so. We headed home, and she still bulled past me... so we did the figure-8 response. She bulls forward past me, I stop and pay out line (the lead is 12' long) while she circles around to face me, goes past me the OTHER way, turns around again, and is then positioned to continue walking like a good horse (her path makes a figure 8), whereupon I continue walking as if she hadn't done something wrong. Six or so repeats of that, and she was happy to stay with her head at my shoulder, like a normal horse. We saw one car, crossing the hard road back to home, and she kept her feet still. I petted her and told her she was a good horse. She looked thoughtful and chewed, which I hope means we've made a teeny amount of progress.
For the non-horsey audience: What's the deal with the chewing? Horse brains are wired to the jaws. If the jaws are working without any eating going on, the mind is in gear. It's like the little hourglass thing in Windows.
