Day one

[glenatron]

The morning began with us heading out to the barn and being assigned our chores, to be performed morning and evening. Any ideas I may have had that this course would give me a holiday from mucking out evapourated immediately as it transpired I'm to be mucking out stalls morning and evening along with having the additional role of goat-wrangler. The latter task may well be beyond my skills as the goat in question is an irresistable force as far as I can tell and goes where it wishes. Which is mostly wherever there are people to talk to.

I call this "Scene with goat and Burro."

Chores completed we retired to the living room of the bunkhouse to talk through the basics of the course and what is going to be going on. This week is going to be interesting in terms of having various professionals talking us through their special areas. Also on Wednesday we're probably going to be helping move some cattle for someone, so that will be interesting.

We spent most of the morning talking, establishing how the course will work and learning about Martin's approach to training young horses. There's quite a lot about this, but I think it will probably come out more informatively as the course goes on so I'm not going to go into too much detail here.

After a tasty lunch ( a half-size salad in my case that made me very nervous about the magnitude of a full-sized one ) we came home and collected our horses.

Ahem. Guess who couldn't catch their horse?

Turns out muggins here hasn't really needed to retrieve a vaguely reluctant horse from a herd before and managed to get it wrong in about nineteen different ways. Go me! Martin had to talk me through several attempts to collect Chewie my partner for the afternoon before I managed to actually persuade him I'm not entirely a bad person and he probably could deal with me. This was a great way to set low expectations for myself, I guess, but I hayoung horses. There's quite a lot about this, but I think it will probably come out more informatively as the course goes on so I'm not going to go into too much detail here.

After a tasty lunch ( a half-size salad in my case that made me very nervous about the magnitude of a full-sized one ) we came home and collected our horses.

Ahem. Guess who couldn't catch their horse?

Turns out muggins here hasn't really needed to retrieve a vaguely reluctant horse from a herd before and managed to get it wrong in about nineteen different ways. Go me! Martin had to talk me through several attempts to collect Chewie my partner for the afternoon before I managed to actually persuade him I'm not entirely a bad person and he probably could deal with me. This was a great way to set low expectations for myself, though I had kind of hoped I would leave it a little longer.

Once the horses were caught ( the other person riding one of Martin's horses, my roommate Fred, had no problem at all ) we headed in, got saddled and bridled and started riding. Having established a walk and trot in each direction Martin had us do left and right-hand circles. After watching this for a while he brought us round and explained how to lean to help the horse steer- justby leaning to the outside on a turn it becomes amazingly more easy for the horse to make the turn because of the way their muscles and movement work. It brings the horse onto a correct bend and helps them to turn easily. He had us experiment with this and sure enough it makes a really big difference. Really big. Once you're aware of it you can make the weighting very subtle, but it's well worth exploring.

After a bit more work with that Martin suggested we go out to the pasture - they had a cow that needed medicating so we all moved the cattle down and then held them in place while Martin sorted out the cow in question and he and Jake ( one of two students who is with us carrying on from last month) roped it so that Jennifer could administer some medication. Then he had us divide into pairs and take it in turns with each pair supporting and holding the cattle in place while he sorted one out and then to make sure that only his chosen horse actually came out. After that( which was easy first time round then harder afterwards ) we split into threes and took it in turns with two people supporting and one person sorting out the cow. I was having some problems with Chewie's controls at this point - he's a very responsive horse, but my hyperactive hands were confusing to him, and although I knew the right cues for him I thought his cues may be different so I was applying them without commitment, so he really didn't see any point in paying much attention to them. Once I realised this things were going a little better, then it was time for us to sort our cow. Fortunately Chewie knew his job pretty well, because I was clueless. A very good little horse ( western horses are small ) and we scampered cheerfully off to the gate, although I lost steering right at the end as Chewie noticed a cow at that end of the field and thought our job was to chase it.

So far, I've shown myself to be pretty clueless, but I'm already learning a lot and I've ridden a horse to cattle for the first time.

Chewy goes back to his herd.

Comments

[life-of-tom.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like if you knew how to do all this stuff, there wouldn't be a point in going off to learn about it.

Oh, and I like the term goat-wrangler. It's a good one.

[http://users.livejournal.com/blitzen_/]

i agree. no point being there if you know it already.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

The latter task may well be beyond my skills as the goat in question is an irresistable force as far as I can tell and goes where it wishes.

Welcome to goats! Luckily, they have cool eyes and hilarious teeth, and so are worth the trouble. Because: oh, yeah. Trouble!

I have a question about the turning thing, but p'raps I'll leave that until you're a little more settled in. :-p

[penella22.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a lot to get used to! COWS, GOATS, MUCKING OUT oh my!! Lots of surprises around every corner (but nothing dangerous) huh? (Willy Wonka quote, sorry...)

Well, I hope the jet lag starts to wear off, and that you & Chewie get things more straightened out. I'm sure he is a big change from your stroppy (is that the word?) Zorro.

[sleepsy-mouse.livejournal.com]

Stroppy is certainly the word for Zorro!!

And goats are cool, and working cows is cool and i'm jealous and you're amazing! Bet you'll muck out faster by the time you get back! Do you keep the same chores all month or do they change?

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I suspect they will change on a week-by-week basis.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I expect they will, but I'm on a whole bunch of other horses today...

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

Ask away- I can but ignore you for a while if I don't have time to respond...

[sleepsy-mouse.livejournal.com]

fair enough. Can you talk now or shall we catch up later?

[stu-the-elder.livejournal.com]

Welcome back to jetlag-land, son!

Yee-har!

- Crump ;)

[skiesfirepaved.livejournal.com]

Haha, what does being a goat wrangler entale? :P

It sounds like a fantastic adventure so far. I'm very envious!

[dancing-crow.livejournal.com]

so glad to see you made it! goats, cows? yikes!!

My kids say to start slow, and never show your best stuff at the beginning, for what that is worth.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I was mostly wondering if you could elaborate a little more on what you meant by "leaning to the outside on a turn" and "brings the horse onto a correct bend."

My first thought on reading that was, Huh, wouldn't that weight the outside seatbone? and weighting a seatbone tends (IME) to encourage a bend to the same side as the seatbone in question, so leaning to the outside on a turn as a way to encourage bend to the inside seemed a little counterintuitive. But possibly what I'm thinking is not what's going on.

(And certainly even if I am interpreting correctly, I could see a strong case for telling folks to lean a little out if, frex, they're leaning too far to the inside to start, or coming out of their outside leg, or otherwise in need of correction, and I can see this as a way to help folks understand bringing the shoulder around instead of just turning the nose, etc. So this isn't--for once!--me picking a fight; just curious.)

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

So here is my current understanding, perhaps incorrect: The need to put weight outside is because the horse tends to want to be underneath the rider's centre of balance. If you're leaning in when the horse turns then you're effectively asking it to fall into the circle you're going around, by keeping yourself outside, you not only ask them to stay out on the circle but you stop compressing those muscles on the inside of the horse making it much easier to follow around in that respect too.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

My trainer has mentioned that he has friends who won't take him on motorcycle rides any more, since because of the horses, the more they/the bike lean in, the more T. sits up straight...:-p

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

A bit more on this- because they use their head and neck to balance, if you are leaning out, they are more likely to bring their head to the inside to counterbalance you, which is another reason it puts them more on the circle.