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Aug. 6th, 2006 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWent out on the IRH yesterday. It could have gone better. I went out with Lynn and her kids and Liss and Boo and Cass, so we had a pretty good crowd.
We went down over the covered bridge and up to the stopsign. When we got there, we met up with Lynn's group, who had started out from over on the Hogback. The lot of us rode past Ede's old house that burned down (I realize I've slid right into the realm of redneck directions. Stuff it.) and then made a right, cut across some fields, and wound up at the bottom of the hill to Dee's. Since Lynn and her kids needed to go back to the Hogback, the two groups split off there and went our seperate ways homeward.
As I said, it could have gone better. I've not been on the IRH but once this season. (Boat. 4-H stuff took up all La's time -- that and her house project. Nobody to ride with, other things to do with my time, so the horse has been outstanding in her field for most of the summer.) Yesterday, she was reasonably pleasant to catch. She stood to be saddled (it's a bareback pad, not a saddle. I don't know that it should still be called saddling, but barebackpadding just looks dumb as shit) which was better than usual. Normally she kind of walks circles around me. After I get her saddled, I generally ask her to walk and trot about two circles in each direction. This is because she sometimes bucks immediately after saddling and I'd rather we got that out of the way BEFORE I got on her. Last week, when I did that, she bucked like a damn fool and I really tore into her, got all in her space and yanked on the lead and yelled at her like she was being stupid because, well, she *was* being stupid. So this week, it was weird. I asked her to circle and she would walk a couple of steps and roach up her back like she wanted to buck and then stop dead (while I was still asking her to walk) and let herself down and then start walking again until she crunched up as if to start bucking... and she'd stop and wait and let herself back down. It was like watching her mind thinking, "She will go all spastic on me if I buck. I would LIKE to buck but I really can't because she goes spare." Weird. Anyway, that went well.
She did a really good job for the entirety of the ride (including cars, of which there were several) until we got past Ede's -- about the halfway point. She put me off *after* a silver SUV went by. The vehicle had passed us. It was coming towards us from the front (her better direction), and it was going gently and it was quiet. She kind of flinched but not hugely, so I figured she was good. I was wrong. She started bucking. That took me completely by surprise because I figured the stupid was past. She dumped me onto the pavement (I'm uninjured except for a bruise on my ass.) and took off thundering over the hills with her tail over her back. (Not kidding about the taking off thundering. Most horses, when they dump a rider, go off about twenty feet and then circle back to the group. The IRH does not do that. She also does not stop when she gets to the end of the reins but instead jerks back and drags them out of your hands. She's broken reins on me before because I would not let go, having come off, and she kept pulling back until the reins broke.) Man, I hate it when she does that.
So, y'know, it could have gone better. On the plus side, she didn't get hit by a car and she didn't kill herself. She stopped when she got to a corner of fence and we got her caught and I got back on her and we proceeded with the rest of the ride. She was kind of stupid for some cars and because my trust was totally blown, half the time I got off and held her damn ass while the cars went by because I didn't want a repeat of the stupids. While holding her on the ground as cars went by, she leapt pretty good and popped herself in the mouth quite nicely a couple of times. I didn't yank extra on her, just didn't give her rein to be stupid. If she'd have stood like a good horse, she wouldn't have gotten popped.
Anyway. There are a couple of problems here and I don't seem to be much closer to solving the big problem, which is that the damn horse acts like a fruitcake when cars go by. Subsidiary problems are things like not stopping when she hits the ends of the reins and bucking as a solution to the world's problems and I don't know how to fix those, either.
Liss's considered opinion is that Galen ruins every horse he raises. He sort of wants to be friends with them. That sounds like a great idea, but in his pursuit of friendship, he kind of skips over some basic skills that horses need to have in order to get along with humans in a good way. For example, Galen's weanlings do not learn to tie like most other weanlings I know. Most people take their weanling (baby horse who is big enough to be weaned, usually between four and six months old) and tie him to a big stout pole with nothing around it so that the weanling cannot hurt himself. And they leave the weanling there while he thrashes around and acts stupid and eventually learns to stand tied with the rope loose because anything else hurts and is useless. An average weanling will learn to stand tied, forever and always, in about a week of daily half-hour sessions.
While kind of rough and ready, the big stout pole route generates horses that respect a rope pretty well and stop when they get to the end of it. Horses that learn to tie this way do not pull back when they get to the end of the rope.
Galen does not like this approach. He feels that it is stressful and mean. He gentles his horses to lead and never asks them to go anywhere that they don't want to go and gives them endless amounts of time to consider new things. He teaches them to stand while being held and doesn't really ever do the big stout pole thing. And he has horses that do not respect ropes and that pull back at the end of the rope. *sigh* Liss got Nick from Galen as a long yearling (about 18 months) and she and Chenille (grey filly of Galen's, the same age as Nick) drug me and Liss up over the field. Nick drug me through the dirt, with me holding on to the end of the lead rope and not walking on my own feet, until I had the good sense to let go rather than engage in further dirt surfing. No horse that is a year and a half old should drag anyone off by the lead rope. That's just fucking rude. And *that* is the kind of respect for a rope that Nick has. She never learned the rope lesson as a baby and I think it's causing difficulties now.
When Liss got Nick and Chenille over to her place (we had to get Galen to come over the next day and catch them and load them on the trailer because they wouldn't lead for anyone but him -- and that's not right either. Horses should lead for whoever has the end of the lead rope.), she tied Nick to the two-horse trailer. Nick DRUG the two-horse trailer across the yard. This is not the sign of a horse that ties. This is the sign of a horse that pulls back. No horse should pull back hard enough to drag a two-horse trailer across the yard. (Both trailer and horse were still standing at the end of it, which is the only reason I have any hope at all that I will eventually succeed with this horse. If she was truly stupid, she'd have been dead long before now.)
So, y'know, when I come off, she pulls back. Hard. She pulls hard enough that she's broken reins in my hands. I need to fix this, so that when I come off, she stays with me as long as I can keep hold of her. It's important for safety. I'm not sure what I want to do about this, but I need to come up with something. *sigh* It really could have gone better... very discouraging day, in all.
We went down over the covered bridge and up to the stopsign. When we got there, we met up with Lynn's group, who had started out from over on the Hogback. The lot of us rode past Ede's old house that burned down (I realize I've slid right into the realm of redneck directions. Stuff it.) and then made a right, cut across some fields, and wound up at the bottom of the hill to Dee's. Since Lynn and her kids needed to go back to the Hogback, the two groups split off there and went our seperate ways homeward.
As I said, it could have gone better. I've not been on the IRH but once this season. (Boat. 4-H stuff took up all La's time -- that and her house project. Nobody to ride with, other things to do with my time, so the horse has been outstanding in her field for most of the summer.) Yesterday, she was reasonably pleasant to catch. She stood to be saddled (it's a bareback pad, not a saddle. I don't know that it should still be called saddling, but barebackpadding just looks dumb as shit) which was better than usual. Normally she kind of walks circles around me. After I get her saddled, I generally ask her to walk and trot about two circles in each direction. This is because she sometimes bucks immediately after saddling and I'd rather we got that out of the way BEFORE I got on her. Last week, when I did that, she bucked like a damn fool and I really tore into her, got all in her space and yanked on the lead and yelled at her like she was being stupid because, well, she *was* being stupid. So this week, it was weird. I asked her to circle and she would walk a couple of steps and roach up her back like she wanted to buck and then stop dead (while I was still asking her to walk) and let herself down and then start walking again until she crunched up as if to start bucking... and she'd stop and wait and let herself back down. It was like watching her mind thinking, "She will go all spastic on me if I buck. I would LIKE to buck but I really can't because she goes spare." Weird. Anyway, that went well.
She did a really good job for the entirety of the ride (including cars, of which there were several) until we got past Ede's -- about the halfway point. She put me off *after* a silver SUV went by. The vehicle had passed us. It was coming towards us from the front (her better direction), and it was going gently and it was quiet. She kind of flinched but not hugely, so I figured she was good. I was wrong. She started bucking. That took me completely by surprise because I figured the stupid was past. She dumped me onto the pavement (I'm uninjured except for a bruise on my ass.) and took off thundering over the hills with her tail over her back. (Not kidding about the taking off thundering. Most horses, when they dump a rider, go off about twenty feet and then circle back to the group. The IRH does not do that. She also does not stop when she gets to the end of the reins but instead jerks back and drags them out of your hands. She's broken reins on me before because I would not let go, having come off, and she kept pulling back until the reins broke.) Man, I hate it when she does that.
So, y'know, it could have gone better. On the plus side, she didn't get hit by a car and she didn't kill herself. She stopped when she got to a corner of fence and we got her caught and I got back on her and we proceeded with the rest of the ride. She was kind of stupid for some cars and because my trust was totally blown, half the time I got off and held her damn ass while the cars went by because I didn't want a repeat of the stupids. While holding her on the ground as cars went by, she leapt pretty good and popped herself in the mouth quite nicely a couple of times. I didn't yank extra on her, just didn't give her rein to be stupid. If she'd have stood like a good horse, she wouldn't have gotten popped.
Anyway. There are a couple of problems here and I don't seem to be much closer to solving the big problem, which is that the damn horse acts like a fruitcake when cars go by. Subsidiary problems are things like not stopping when she hits the ends of the reins and bucking as a solution to the world's problems and I don't know how to fix those, either.
Liss's considered opinion is that Galen ruins every horse he raises. He sort of wants to be friends with them. That sounds like a great idea, but in his pursuit of friendship, he kind of skips over some basic skills that horses need to have in order to get along with humans in a good way. For example, Galen's weanlings do not learn to tie like most other weanlings I know. Most people take their weanling (baby horse who is big enough to be weaned, usually between four and six months old) and tie him to a big stout pole with nothing around it so that the weanling cannot hurt himself. And they leave the weanling there while he thrashes around and acts stupid and eventually learns to stand tied with the rope loose because anything else hurts and is useless. An average weanling will learn to stand tied, forever and always, in about a week of daily half-hour sessions.
While kind of rough and ready, the big stout pole route generates horses that respect a rope pretty well and stop when they get to the end of it. Horses that learn to tie this way do not pull back when they get to the end of the rope.
Galen does not like this approach. He feels that it is stressful and mean. He gentles his horses to lead and never asks them to go anywhere that they don't want to go and gives them endless amounts of time to consider new things. He teaches them to stand while being held and doesn't really ever do the big stout pole thing. And he has horses that do not respect ropes and that pull back at the end of the rope. *sigh* Liss got Nick from Galen as a long yearling (about 18 months) and she and Chenille (grey filly of Galen's, the same age as Nick) drug me and Liss up over the field. Nick drug me through the dirt, with me holding on to the end of the lead rope and not walking on my own feet, until I had the good sense to let go rather than engage in further dirt surfing. No horse that is a year and a half old should drag anyone off by the lead rope. That's just fucking rude. And *that* is the kind of respect for a rope that Nick has. She never learned the rope lesson as a baby and I think it's causing difficulties now.
When Liss got Nick and Chenille over to her place (we had to get Galen to come over the next day and catch them and load them on the trailer because they wouldn't lead for anyone but him -- and that's not right either. Horses should lead for whoever has the end of the lead rope.), she tied Nick to the two-horse trailer. Nick DRUG the two-horse trailer across the yard. This is not the sign of a horse that ties. This is the sign of a horse that pulls back. No horse should pull back hard enough to drag a two-horse trailer across the yard. (Both trailer and horse were still standing at the end of it, which is the only reason I have any hope at all that I will eventually succeed with this horse. If she was truly stupid, she'd have been dead long before now.)
So, y'know, when I come off, she pulls back. Hard. She pulls hard enough that she's broken reins in my hands. I need to fix this, so that when I come off, she stays with me as long as I can keep hold of her. It's important for safety. I'm not sure what I want to do about this, but I need to come up with something. *sigh* It really could have gone better... very discouraging day, in all.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 01:37 pm (UTC)I was reading an article at work the other day about beef bulls and their stress levels when getting transported from the finishing lot to the slaughterhouse. (Stress hormones make meat taste bad, so it's better to keep the animals from getting stressed as they're approaching slaughter.) What the article found was that one of the factors that made beef more stressed was the farmer's attitudes toward bulls. But not in the direction I was expecting--farmers who like bulls, enjoy hanging around the paddock looking at their stock, etc., raised bulls who were harder to handle and more stressed by loading onto trucks. Because generally people get cattle to move in a specific direction by getting into their "flight zone"--approach a bull from the left and it will move to the right. The bulls with the friendly farmers were too used to people and consequently couldn't be gently herded that way. They had to be hauled onto the trucks and that was far more stressful.
Sometimes, particularly in dealing with animals, too much kindness just *isn't*.
Kids
Date: 2006-08-07 05:08 pm (UTC)Yup. I have kids. Children kids, not goat kids. They're animals, too. Same deal with them, it seems.