(no subject)
Aug. 9th, 2006 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickNews on the horse front. Mostly, the day was a success.
With the grey gelding Phantom: Someone has put a pad and a saddle on this horse before. He's seen them and doesn't get excited about them. He stands better for saddling than the IRH does. For real. (At the end of the day, La informed me that he'd been saddled a total of three times. Man. I definitely have the short-bus horse.)
I rocked his weight side-to-side with the saddle until he stepped out to the side with one front foot and resisted me. I petted him and told him he was a good boy in my best Barbara Woodhouse voice. I did that to teach him to brace his front feet so that he can stand still while people get on. One of the primary reasons horses walk off when folks get on is that they're off balance and have to take a step to get back in balance. If you can prevent that first step, the horse has much better odds of standing to be mounted.
I put some weight in the stirrups with my hands and he didn't seem to mind. Then I had Ash hold the horse and Theron hold the off stirrup so that I could hoist my fat arse into the saddle. (Phantom is kinda tall.) And I sat there while Ash led me around the yard at a very sedate walk. First ride! I got off, Ash got on, Theron led him around the yard at a sedate walk. Second ride! Ash got off, I got on, Ash led me around the yard at a sedate walk. Third ride! He never looked particularly like he was going to be a bad horse... just a little uncertain and wobbly like green horses are. That was all I did with Phantom today. After that, I told him that he was a good boy, untacked him, and put him back in the field.
Next up was Wren. Wren is Meatly's baby from a couple of years back. She's... going to be interesting. I don't think she's spooky or overreactive, but she is very, very light. Wren... I didn't have to let the tail of the rope flick her more than once. Once, I had to do so that she'd know I meant it. After that, though, I just kind of gestured in her general direction. A very minimal threat of action was sufficient. Wren is pretty much untouched by human hands. I can catch her. She's never had her feet picked up. She hasn't been touched all over and has views about her body. She doesn't do more than lead and tie... but those she does quite well. Today we started. The only thing that she does that I don't care for is she runs over me when she's nervous. That's got to stop. She's a lot bigger than I am and I can't be having with that. Wren got half a can of grain from me to encourage catching and to see if we can't get ahead of those big rafter-y hips. They're still kinda pointy, but she's not grown up yet, either.
Finally, there was the idiot child, my special-needs horse. I didn't have a huge amount of difficulty catching her today because she was standing by the pensioner's field and chatting up Jet in a very brazen fashion. Hussy. I guess Jet was telling her stories of his youth and claiming that while he ain't as good as he once was, he's as good once as he ever was. Anyway, I caught her without having to work at it.
She is now all about the feed instead of worrying about my car noises. No matter how much I gun my anemic cavalier in her ears, she cannot be convinced to abandon the feed. SInce that went so well, I decided that my Very Special horse should lead from the car window. (It was only after I came up with this brilliant idea that I considered the logistics of doing it with a clutch...) So, in the driveway, there, I put my cavalier in drive and I drove forward the twenty feet or so that I could drive. (Maybe six car lengths?) And the special needs horse had special needs, not that this is news. But, y'know, I got her reeled in to the new car location. And I put the car in reverse and reversed right back to where I had started from -- at the mindnumbingly excessive speed of a cavalier in reverse in a driveway. The horse blew a gasket. I reeled her back in like a prize marlin on a chartered fishing boat. Forward, back, forward, back, forward, back. Over and over, we did this. And at the end of the day, the IRH lead from the car window of my cavalier for small distances at very low speeds... and I had a rope burn on the ring finger of my left hand.
With the grey gelding Phantom: Someone has put a pad and a saddle on this horse before. He's seen them and doesn't get excited about them. He stands better for saddling than the IRH does. For real. (At the end of the day, La informed me that he'd been saddled a total of three times. Man. I definitely have the short-bus horse.)
I rocked his weight side-to-side with the saddle until he stepped out to the side with one front foot and resisted me. I petted him and told him he was a good boy in my best Barbara Woodhouse voice. I did that to teach him to brace his front feet so that he can stand still while people get on. One of the primary reasons horses walk off when folks get on is that they're off balance and have to take a step to get back in balance. If you can prevent that first step, the horse has much better odds of standing to be mounted.
I put some weight in the stirrups with my hands and he didn't seem to mind. Then I had Ash hold the horse and Theron hold the off stirrup so that I could hoist my fat arse into the saddle. (Phantom is kinda tall.) And I sat there while Ash led me around the yard at a very sedate walk. First ride! I got off, Ash got on, Theron led him around the yard at a sedate walk. Second ride! Ash got off, I got on, Ash led me around the yard at a sedate walk. Third ride! He never looked particularly like he was going to be a bad horse... just a little uncertain and wobbly like green horses are. That was all I did with Phantom today. After that, I told him that he was a good boy, untacked him, and put him back in the field.
Next up was Wren. Wren is Meatly's baby from a couple of years back. She's... going to be interesting. I don't think she's spooky or overreactive, but she is very, very light. Wren... I didn't have to let the tail of the rope flick her more than once. Once, I had to do so that she'd know I meant it. After that, though, I just kind of gestured in her general direction. A very minimal threat of action was sufficient. Wren is pretty much untouched by human hands. I can catch her. She's never had her feet picked up. She hasn't been touched all over and has views about her body. She doesn't do more than lead and tie... but those she does quite well. Today we started. The only thing that she does that I don't care for is she runs over me when she's nervous. That's got to stop. She's a lot bigger than I am and I can't be having with that. Wren got half a can of grain from me to encourage catching and to see if we can't get ahead of those big rafter-y hips. They're still kinda pointy, but she's not grown up yet, either.
Finally, there was the idiot child, my special-needs horse. I didn't have a huge amount of difficulty catching her today because she was standing by the pensioner's field and chatting up Jet in a very brazen fashion. Hussy. I guess Jet was telling her stories of his youth and claiming that while he ain't as good as he once was, he's as good once as he ever was. Anyway, I caught her without having to work at it.
She is now all about the feed instead of worrying about my car noises. No matter how much I gun my anemic cavalier in her ears, she cannot be convinced to abandon the feed. SInce that went so well, I decided that my Very Special horse should lead from the car window. (It was only after I came up with this brilliant idea that I considered the logistics of doing it with a clutch...) So, in the driveway, there, I put my cavalier in drive and I drove forward the twenty feet or so that I could drive. (Maybe six car lengths?) And the special needs horse had special needs, not that this is news. But, y'know, I got her reeled in to the new car location. And I put the car in reverse and reversed right back to where I had started from -- at the mindnumbingly excessive speed of a cavalier in reverse in a driveway. The horse blew a gasket. I reeled her back in like a prize marlin on a chartered fishing boat. Forward, back, forward, back, forward, back. Over and over, we did this. And at the end of the day, the IRH lead from the car window of my cavalier for small distances at very low speeds... and I had a rope burn on the ring finger of my left hand.
