When the boss asked me to work with Mimi, he had one main goal in mind. He wanted her to be calm and rideable even when there were unusual and spooky things all around her. Her primary job at this barn will be as a trail horse. But riders and horses from this barn have been winning prizes at the local open horse show for years. The boss sees that kind of potential in this little walking horse.
He first wanted to see how she would act around
distractions and “spooky stuff”. We used
a noisy plastic tarp as an acid test. As
I led her from the pasture toward the hitching rail, he pulled a tarp out and
laid it on the ground in front of us.
Mimi walked over it with no problems.
After we passed by, he picked up the tarp and gave it a good shake. Mimi jumped a bit, but it was a simple thing
to get her attention back to me. I
turned her around and walked toward the boss as he continued to shake the
tarp. The little horse wasn’t fazed at
all. I took the tarp and drug and shook
it as I led Mimi to the arena. There, we
went through the whole routine. She walked
over the crumpled up tarp and stood there as I draped it over her. I made it a point to make as much noise with
the tarp as possible. I covered her as
far as her head before she started to get nervous. We worked with that a little bit, then called
it a day.
The next session, I saddled up with the intention of
taking a ride off the farm into the nearby State Park. To get there, we have to ride for about an
eighth of a mile on a paved public road before reaching a power line right of
way where we can get off the road if needed.
Things went fine until we got to the end of the driveway. Mimi stood perfectly still while we waited
for traffic to clear. But when the time
came to move out onto the road, she refused.
I pressed her, but she got more and more agitated. I decided not to have the fight on pavement
and in traffic, so I turned her onto the perimeter trail that circles the
farm.
She continued to resist, but here, I could concentrate
on the horse rather than traffic. I kept
pushing her forward and each refusal got a little less enthusiastic. This portion of the perimeter trail parallels
the road. Several types of vehicles
drove by as we worked there, but Mimi paid them no mind. We rode back and forth beside the road,
passing by the driveway several times.
She attempted to duck back down the driveway toward home at first, but
after a while she realized we were going to stay here till I was ready to go
home. Each time she refused, I kept her
facing the direction I wanted to go and pressed her forward. She is very responsive, so I didn’t need to
get harsh at all. At odd intervals I
would reverse direction, and she gradually settled in with the program.
After a while I started looking for a way to end the
session on a positive note. She had
stopped fighting about going back and forth along the trail. I decided that the first time she went past
the driveway without trying to duck back down it, we would head back to the
barn. When we reached that point I rode
past, then turned her around and made a loop into the drive.
When I got her put away, the boss and I sat and talked
for a while. He told me that he’d had a
couple other folks riding her and that they had the same problem. They had solved it by taking her out with
other horses. I need to get her to move
out alone. I’m still reluctant to engage
in a fight in traffic. I’ll have to
figure out a safe way to do that.
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