Day nineteen
27 February 2009 03:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glenatronToday I gave the anxious black horse his third ride.
We started the day preparing some of the colts we have been riding to go back home, or at least for their owners to see them. They're basically good riding horses now, if maybe a little green, and very easy to get on with so I think their owner will be happy with what they have.
Then it was time for the chunky black horse from last week to have his third ride and guess whose turn it was to sit up there...
Martin was working him to start with in a slightly unusual way, having roped one of his hind feet. Because he has done a lot of "groundwork" that involved teaching him to run away from people and nothing else that we could see, he was tending to see running away as a default behaviour. Martin used the leg rope as a way to pull him up and get him thinking about stopping. After throwing himself around a bit the horse got the idea.
I needed some schooling on the saddling side of things and so did he so Martin took the opportunity to get me to put the saddle on about ten times, pointing out how I can swing it better, get a better line, land it more comfortably and so on. Once that was done to Martin's satisfaction we cinched up and Martin worked him some more, at first in the round pen and then out in the arena around it, letting him find the end of the rope and learn to stop and getting some of the bucks out.
Then it was time to get on...
Is that trepidation in my face? I guess if Martin says its safe...
Leaning over the saddle, patting the other side- he's anxious about things moving from his left eye to his right, so we didn't want any problems there.
"If he goes, it will feel like a bungie- lean back, push back on the saddle horn, hold your rope like you're doing curls and he'll hit the end of my rope and stop."
Yup, definitely didn't get all the bucks out before.
So anyway, after a while he stopped needing to run and started to get used to me being there, I practiced swinging the lead over his head from side to side, moving in the saddle, petting him and generally getting him accustomed to me being there. We were into a bit of a routine after a while and I was able to relax...
That's strange, I appear to be getting back on him. No idea why that would be, although there are donuts involved and a few minor bruises.
We got going again and he did really well, so I got off.
Now Fred had been going on about laying horses down for the last few weeks and he was asking Martin how it was done, so Martin demonstrated with the horse I had been riding and with grey Pete, who hadn't really had any Martin time prior to ditching Jake yesterday and clearly needed some. He started by hobbling one front leg and then explained that the horse needs to lower their head and let their wither drop and then to back up so they can sit down. I have heard a lot of things about laying horses down but never seen it done and it was very interesting, and maybe different to what I thought. Martin explained that it didn't really matter if the horse actually did lie down, as long as they were ready to. He doesn't think it's a case where the horse believes they are going to die, they just follow a direction and they start to realise that they can do it without being threatened. It took a long time for the horse to back up, but once he did, down he went:
And this was what I found really interesting:
The horse stayed lying down. He was still lying down while Martin laid down the grey horse. They both kept lying down for another ten minutes or so while Martin talked to us, occasionally sitting up and looking around and then lying back down. Martin talked about setting things up so your idea becomes the horse's idea and this really was that principle in action- these horses were lying down as though it was a comfy and relaxing bed. In fact Pierre, who didn't go off to lunch with the rest of us, said the black horse was still lying there an hour later, dozing happily, and only got up just before we returned.
In the afternoon we rode a set of colts ( I was on Bay Star again, who once again lived up to his name ) and then headed off to help load a couple of colts that Jack was buying and wanted to bring over to Martin to start. They were American Saddlebreds from a barn over near dallas.
The horses were loading as we arrived, so Martin's skills weren't necessarily needed, but we got to have a tour of the barn. Saddlebreds are odd horses, long in every respect and elegant, a bit like equine salukis. The culture that surrounds them is a weird microcosm. Imagine a story in which the devil visits a small isolated island and subtly corrupts every tenet of their religion turning it into something dark and twisted, while the inhabitants of the island go along as though everything is normal. That was what this barn made me think of, equitation in the tradition of Lovecraft. We all left there a little bit nauseated and very glad that the two fillies that were coming back with us weren't going to have the tendons in their tails cut, huge wedge shoes dropped on them or any other abhorrence of that culture. It always looked wrong to me in pictures. Now I have seen it up close it's a lot worse than I thought. The fact that those long horses are so beautiful, like gazelles, just makes it harder to see them in stalls with shelves round the edge so they can't rub off the chains used to fix their broken tails into a "correct" tail carriage.
Sickening.
We started the day preparing some of the colts we have been riding to go back home, or at least for their owners to see them. They're basically good riding horses now, if maybe a little green, and very easy to get on with so I think their owner will be happy with what they have.
Then it was time for the chunky black horse from last week to have his third ride and guess whose turn it was to sit up there...
Martin was working him to start with in a slightly unusual way, having roped one of his hind feet. Because he has done a lot of "groundwork" that involved teaching him to run away from people and nothing else that we could see, he was tending to see running away as a default behaviour. Martin used the leg rope as a way to pull him up and get him thinking about stopping. After throwing himself around a bit the horse got the idea.
I needed some schooling on the saddling side of things and so did he so Martin took the opportunity to get me to put the saddle on about ten times, pointing out how I can swing it better, get a better line, land it more comfortably and so on. Once that was done to Martin's satisfaction we cinched up and Martin worked him some more, at first in the round pen and then out in the arena around it, letting him find the end of the rope and learn to stop and getting some of the bucks out.
Then it was time to get on...
Is that trepidation in my face? I guess if Martin says its safe...
Leaning over the saddle, patting the other side- he's anxious about things moving from his left eye to his right, so we didn't want any problems there.
"If he goes, it will feel like a bungie- lean back, push back on the saddle horn, hold your rope like you're doing curls and he'll hit the end of my rope and stop."
Yup, definitely didn't get all the bucks out before.
So anyway, after a while he stopped needing to run and started to get used to me being there, I practiced swinging the lead over his head from side to side, moving in the saddle, petting him and generally getting him accustomed to me being there. We were into a bit of a routine after a while and I was able to relax...
That's strange, I appear to be getting back on him. No idea why that would be, although there are donuts involved and a few minor bruises.
We got going again and he did really well, so I got off.
Now Fred had been going on about laying horses down for the last few weeks and he was asking Martin how it was done, so Martin demonstrated with the horse I had been riding and with grey Pete, who hadn't really had any Martin time prior to ditching Jake yesterday and clearly needed some. He started by hobbling one front leg and then explained that the horse needs to lower their head and let their wither drop and then to back up so they can sit down. I have heard a lot of things about laying horses down but never seen it done and it was very interesting, and maybe different to what I thought. Martin explained that it didn't really matter if the horse actually did lie down, as long as they were ready to. He doesn't think it's a case where the horse believes they are going to die, they just follow a direction and they start to realise that they can do it without being threatened. It took a long time for the horse to back up, but once he did, down he went:
And this was what I found really interesting:
The horse stayed lying down. He was still lying down while Martin laid down the grey horse. They both kept lying down for another ten minutes or so while Martin talked to us, occasionally sitting up and looking around and then lying back down. Martin talked about setting things up so your idea becomes the horse's idea and this really was that principle in action- these horses were lying down as though it was a comfy and relaxing bed. In fact Pierre, who didn't go off to lunch with the rest of us, said the black horse was still lying there an hour later, dozing happily, and only got up just before we returned.
In the afternoon we rode a set of colts ( I was on Bay Star again, who once again lived up to his name ) and then headed off to help load a couple of colts that Jack was buying and wanted to bring over to Martin to start. They were American Saddlebreds from a barn over near dallas.
The horses were loading as we arrived, so Martin's skills weren't necessarily needed, but we got to have a tour of the barn. Saddlebreds are odd horses, long in every respect and elegant, a bit like equine salukis. The culture that surrounds them is a weird microcosm. Imagine a story in which the devil visits a small isolated island and subtly corrupts every tenet of their religion turning it into something dark and twisted, while the inhabitants of the island go along as though everything is normal. That was what this barn made me think of, equitation in the tradition of Lovecraft. We all left there a little bit nauseated and very glad that the two fillies that were coming back with us weren't going to have the tendons in their tails cut, huge wedge shoes dropped on them or any other abhorrence of that culture. It always looked wrong to me in pictures. Now I have seen it up close it's a lot worse than I thought. The fact that those long horses are so beautiful, like gazelles, just makes it harder to see them in stalls with shelves round the edge so they can't rub off the chains used to fix their broken tails into a "correct" tail carriage.
Sickening.
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Date: 27 Feb 2009 00:43 (UTC)