Another ride on the mare I like

I went back to ride the horse I like best in my search on Sunday, Wiszi.




We had some grooming glitches.

While grooming the mare isn’t very skilled at picking up her feet. It takes some convincing for me to get her back feet off the ground. I am annoyed that by the age of 5 she has no muscle memory of giving her feet to people when they ask – it should be an automatic response by now. I’ve never had to train a horse to do such simple things – Baasha knew this at 3.

We had a personal space issue.

Usually the mare moves away from me when I poke her with one finger – she has had some manners training to move away from pressure. But for some reason on this day she barged her side/hip against me as I groomed her and no amount of poking with numerous fingers and the brush on her flank would get her back over. Even the lady joined me in putting pressure on her side, trying to get her to move over so I wasn’t pressed up against the chestnut mare. She just wouldn’t budge. I found myself looking over/around her, wondering what it was on her other side that she refused to swing herself toward. Finally she moved and I went to her head and stroked her and said “Goooooooooood” and just breathed calmly with her. I have no idea what that is about but she apparently does not have the automatic reaction to move away from pressure 100% of the time.

We had a lunging fail.

She doesn’t know how to lunge. I asked the lady to lunge her and she did, albeit a very small circle (5-10 meters), but had some difficulty. Then she let me try and one direction was fine, but the other direction the horse was confused and she kept trying to come to me or take off at a fast trot, when I just wanted her to walk. Sometimes I think walking on a lunge line is the hardest gait, but this is usually because people usually lunge a horse to take the edge off and that means going fast. I think lunging is a training exercise. But I’ve never trained a horse how to lunge, and wasn’t sure what to do because if I used the whip toward her shoulder to get her away from me, she’d take off, then I’d tug the cavesson to get her to walk, and she’d come off the circle, right to me. (Recently a blog had a great video showing a method of teaching lunging – use 2 people – one keeps the horse out on the 20 meter line with the whip, the other just holds the line, while standing firmly planted in one spot. It was brilliant.)

Then we had some riding adventures.

We saddled up and went out for our second trail ride. We went a different way and I wasn’t thrilled to be riding a shod horse on pavement, but the horses are used to it. We did a lot of trotting and I was in the lead because I want to see how brave this young mare is. She looks at everything as if she’s never seen it before, but she doesn’t hesitate. Then I asked if we could separate and I was sorry I asked! The lady took one trail and I took another, and we completely left each other. She told me we’d meet at the end at a field but I saw no field. About halfway up the hill my mare just stopped. I know she felt my hesitation, couldn’t trust me, and wanted to know where her friend was. I drummed her sides with my feet, I also talked to her in my best fake confident voice, “Walk on!” and it seemed to work. She finally moved on. Whew. I also used very strong seat aids to keep her moving forward and hopefully not piss her off. When we got to the end of the trail there was no field and I had to figure out which way to turn. I did not like this! The mare could feel my uncertainty (where are we?) and that didn’t help. I kept planning my emergency dismount. But I chose correctly and soon enough we saw the chestnut mare coming toward us. An old couple was walking in the woods and they saw the happy reunion and asked if the horses knew each other, if they were mother and child. *giggle* I found out later that the chestnut mare had a little meltdown of her own as soon as we left her. OK then.

We were having fun, talking and laughing when suddenly a deer jumped in the dry leaves above us on the hillside, and our horses went from a walk to a gallop in a microsecond. At the moment of the bolt I kind of blacked out for a second, wondering what was happening, and remember looking at the “steady eddie” mare to see if she was also bolting. Yes, she was. Her dappled chestnut rump was moving just as rapidly as we were, about a meter in front of us. I also found myself attached to the saddle horn by my bra as my mare lurched forward and upward. (How do you prevent this, western riders? It used to always happen to me anytime I jumped logs in the woods with a western saddle.)

But not too many more seconds passed before the mares stopped their bolt and turned their faces to see what it was that almost got them. Somehow I was still sitting on that horse, and I cannot help but wonder what her reaction would have been if she had been alone. Certainly you cannot blame a young horse for bolting when its best friend and protector also bolts. I wonder if I’ll ever know the answer.

Things didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped, but I still like the horse enough that I scheduled a pre-purchase exam for Monday.