I clean stalls wrong, and Mag fights on the lunge again

That's what Gabi said to me today as she observed. I knew this would happen. I knew I was being a little wasteful of bedding.

I'd noted that the stalls that Willy and Gabi clean every day are not what I would call clean. They just have a ...portion?  of the manure removed, and the bedding swept to the middle as a bed. But, full of poop bits. I understand they don't have much time, but back in the 90s at big barns, I never saw clean stalls with any poop at all in them. Here, apparently, they save bedding costs by only marginally cleaning the stalls.

Coupled with Mag's need to stall walk all night, I knew I was in for it. I had found a great method of removing the tiniest pieces of poop, and it would take up to 30 minutes, but I'd end up with a  clean stall. I also knew I was tossing away a bit of bedding in my attempts.

Gabi said I need to shake the manure fork and only remove what doesn't fall through. I said, "And then all these pea-sized bits fall through, see?" and she said, "Then LEAVE THEM." I said, "No, that's not a clean stall."

Since I pay privately for each sack of bedding (7euros each, yikes), I feel I'm allowed to waste a little if I want. If it's a matter of her needing to order bedding more often, I'll just go buy it myself.

***

Gabi said I could try out her lunging cavessons and I was so excited to do so. I put the "Barefoot" brand on him and it fit great. And it was amazing. Having a connection with the center of his nose was so effective and asking for a bend without even really even asking, the weight of it alone had him dropping his head and bending automatically. I had to do very little for a lovely lunging session with submissive eyes and bending and dropping posture.

And then someone moved a horse or something.

Mag flipped, like a switch, out. "I gotta see what's going on!" I pulled him back to me and he STRUCK OUT with a fore hoof angrily, "You do not control me!" he said.

In the next moment he pulled his old trick of slamming sideways and running off at full speed. He tried to drag me off my feet.

It would have worked, if we weren't in a 15X30 arena, and he hadn't had a cavesson on, and I hadn't had thick gloves.

I pulled to get him back on the circle and snapped the whip behind his ear. And cracked it at his butt, and basically hit him and cracked the whip so that he was cantering around me. You do not try to pull people off their feet.

And then we had an audience. Cuz of all the whip cracking, I suppose. How embarrassing.

Of course, by the time they arrived, they hadn't seen WHY I was cracking the whip, they just saw me chasing my horse around full speed with the whip.

Then I let him do a very fast trot, and then, audience still there, I said, "Jog" and he did, respectfully bending to me and jogging.

The audience got bored and left. Right, obedient horses are booooring.

I spent another 15 minutes there with him just making sure he was submissive, and then when done, I sat on a bench and he stood there forlornly 10 feet away from me, doing nothing.

I was hoping someone else would want to use the arena and we could use them for training distraction, but no one came. A cat climbed up the 3 round bales, 20 feet in the air, and spooked Mag, but I had to laugh, that is not something you see every day! I love those barn cats.

I have this fear that I will try riding Mag on trail, and we'll come to a hill and he'll say, "Screw you, hills are hard work, get off!"

We'll see.