All the Crazy Horses!!

Ok.  Blogger for Word is just cool!

A change in the weather is on the way, and the horses know it.  Flint, Felicity, and even my little Felipe were all extremely edgy today.  Felipe tried to step on me multiple times (and succeeded twice.  Thanks goodness for boots) as well as bucked.  When a horse does that, the handler is supposed step in to the circle the horse is bucking around (which is right next to the horse) because you certainly don’t want to be behind or in front of frightened horse.  As long as I am in the center, he can’t kick me.  While you’re in the center and the horse is going crazy, don’t look at the horse, which is really tough since it feels natural to look at what he’s doing to avoid danger.  That’s the first time Felipe has bucked even a little.  Flint is just insane.  Felicity almost kicked Brooke.  The weanlings were too nervous for us to handle and expect any progress (without multiple attempts to kick off someone’s head). So we turned them loose in a round pen, and after they had thoroughly kicked each other (I know Flint kicked Felipe at least twice) and bucked in circles, Brooke and I (the two with the least horse experience) watched as Laurie and the TA chased them around until they were reasonably so tired they didn’t care as much about the wind.  After that, they handled much better.  We worked on the usual: scary tarp of doom, bridge, scary objects (like clippers), and back.  Back is still completely without success.  Haha… unfortunately that’s due to “pilot error” (it’s my fault Felipe doesn’t understand).  But I’ve got a new plan for teaching back, it’s obvious the way Dr. Jack told us to use is not going to work.  SO I’m going to lead Felipe until he’s parallel with a fence and have a TA stand on his other side.  Then, I’ll say Back and walk toward him while shaking the lead rope.  This way he hopefully will decide back is the only way to go rather than towards me or the TA.   After this class I’ll definitely be more comfortable around horses.