which_chick | (no subject)

I spent the day today over at La's, drywalling the entryway and part of the kitchen. When I got done with that, I took the red idiot out for a spin.

Nick came when called, was reasonable for getting ready to ride, and we stepped out across the hard road to the hay field that's been cut short for the winter. It's reasonably level and has good, safe footing for the sort of work that we're going to be doing (things like nice, bendy circles, figures of eight, serpentines, shoulder-in stuff, and so forth. Also collected/extended walk and trot sets) with a more or less straight line road so that I can do straight things. It's a good work space. Usually.

In the field, there was a huge pile of dreadful little children being drug around on a wagon behind a small garden tractor, said garden tractor being driven by an adult. They waved and screamed at Nick, who thought they would eat her. In the field, there was someone who sounded a lot like Gillian (but may not have been her) driving around in a damn pickup truck. Nick is not a fan of motor vehicles and she thought THAT would eat her, too, even though it was not going very fast. Those things passed and I thought we might get some work done then. But, no.

Then, in the field, there was Theron. He was there with his truck and his kids (both under twelve), shooting firearms to get ready for some season or other. He started off with a .22, which is a fairly dainty and amenable rifle suitable for groundhogs or squirrels or similar. Nick tolerates a .22 being fired in the near vicinity pretty well and we got some work done despite the firearm activity nearby. (The shooting was away from us, so we were not in danger of getting accidentally shot. Theron is very big on the sort of gun control where you only hit what you are aiming at. Of the other kind of gun control, he's not so much a fan.) Circles and serpentines and spirals seemed to calm Nick down more than any work on a straightaway, so I've made a note on that front.

That one being done (or whatever), he upgraded to a .32-20, which is another small-game sized rifle, a bit bigger than the .22. That was OK -- I could feel her flinch every time they shot it, but she settled down afterwards pretty well. After the .32-20, they fired up the .30-06 which is a sizeable firearm suitable for shooting deer. That did not go so well. By the time he moved past the .30-06 onto whatever else (shotgun, 14 gauge, I'm told) was on the list, Goof had had *enough* and was not calming down between shots anymore. ("Sighting in" was what I think they claimed they were doing... there's a shot, and then some twinking around with the firearm and then another shot. It wasn't steady shooting. There was enough time for the horse to calm down between shots, if she wasn't too upset.) At that point, I called it a day and rode her home. She was not happy but she wasn't out of control, either... just sweating and too flinchy to accomplish anything more productive. I've ridden her high and tight before, but this was a whole new realm of high and tight. She was NOT HAPPY, hard as a rock and wound tight like a spring just before it snaps.

I got her back to the house and plopped the remainder of her bucket of feed in front of her. She was *not* a happy camper, snorted really loudly in the Not Dead Yet snort, twice, and looked up and around way too much. She was eating her feed in little snatched bites and then looking up to make sure nothing was going to get her, way worse than she usually is.

She hadn't gotten much better when Lance came back with a load of round bales on the flatbed truck (CDL required, has air brakes -- this is a *big* truck) with a flatbed trailer full of round bales behind it to boot. As it was getting dark, he had the headlights on, the better to blind us with. He pulled up to about six feet from Nicknick (who does not like motor vehicles, recall) and blew the air horn at her. *sigh* She didn't take that particularly well, either, but she didn't leap or pull on the rope. (She knows better than to leap or pull on the rope.)

I would really rather have had a calmer, more relaxed horse outing today. I wasn't gunning (sorry) for scaring the shit out of my horse the whole fucking time she was out of the field... but... well, that was the environment that we had today. Perhaps tomorrow will be better. One can only hope. On the plus side, Nick did NOT do anything she wasn't supposed to do. There was no bucking, no leaping, no rearing, no big spooking, nothing like any of that. She was just high and tight. A lot.

(Edited for accuracy on the firearms front. I didn't inquire about the firearms but one of the kids was like "Your horse did okay with the .22 and the .32 but she started to lose it at the .30-06 and you quit totally right after we switched to the shotgun.")