Today’s Ride (In Pictures)

First of all, thanks to everyone for the comments and suggestions on my last post. I was just a little frustrated that evening, and forgot about all the good things Nico is doing. And don’t worry - I’m not trying to get him in a “frame” yet, just trying to get away from the “riding a giraffe” feeling.

Today, my boyfriend was visiting, so I dragged him to the barn to take pictures! Nico was a good boy as always, but he has been playing rough in the pasture and has quite a few bumps and scrapes (aka teeth marks) on him. I’ve seen him dish it out to his pasturemates, though, so I don’t think he’s being picked on. They’re still just sorting things out. He only had one mark that cut deep enough to bleed.

So I tacked him up and we went outside. Here we are, with Nico waiting patiently for me to put my gloves on. You can clearly see in this picture just how spirited my pony is. As soon as this picture was taken, he ran off bucking around the arena Haha. More like I had to wake him up…

And here is why the boyfriend needs specific instructions for what to take pictures of. This is not even slightly flattering, but you can see how well Nico stands at the mounting block:

After mounting, I’ve been having him stand for 15-30 seconds or so until I ask him to walk off. Movement isn’t his favorite thing, so he’s pretty good at this exercise:

Then we walked around for awhile, and I showed the boyfriend how we’ve been practicing bending and moving off my legs. The boyfriend knows nothing about horses, so he wasn’t too impressed. I’ve been working a lot with getting Nico to move off leg pressure, and he has recently started to cross over his front legs in a small circle at the walk. The Haflinger trainer I worked for last summer spent lots of time on these kind of exercises with her horses. We haven’t done much of it at the trot yet, but that’s our next step.

My trainer wants me to start working on picking up some contact with the reins at the walk. Contact still makes him a little nervous, so I’m just doing it a little at a time and making sure he stays relaxed.

Then we started trotting and Nico was a very good boy today! He was really relaxed and responded to my half-halts very willingly. And looking at the pictures, I see that he’s not as giraffe-like as I thought, so I’ll not pick at him too much about his head for awhile.

Here is the corner of the arena where we sometimes run into the fence at the trot. If I’m not paying attention, we literally might not make it through the corner. My trainer said she’s had a few horses that will run into the fence if you don’t steer them well enough. Hmm… Seems like Nico is lacking some self-preservation skills…

And here is a picture right after we trotted over the pole. Yes, Nico trots over poles. I know you are impressed. During a lesson, my trainer told me to trot over the pole and I asked her what the chances were that he might leap over it. She said he would not leap over it. She was right.

Then, after trotting for awhile, I showed the boyfriend Nico’s lateral bending skills. Again, he was unimpressed.

And then, because I’m a big dork, I decided to cool Nico out riding bareback. That’s one of the perks of owning my own horse. I can do whatever I want with it!

After riding, I got some betadine from the barn manager and took Nico out to the wash rack to clean out his cut. It was on the top of his butt, near his tail. I started the water on his back foot and he picked it up and kicked behind him several times. I was up by his shoulder, but kicking is still highly undesirable, so I yelled at him and he quit. Then, this kid drove by at like 100 miles per hour on a riding mower and Nico almost passed out. He got really nervous and did the most impressive “spook in place” that I have ever seen.

So far, I have only found one thing that really scares this pony, and it’s the sound of something dragging on concrete. Someone dragging a muck bucket can make him perk up and stare at it in horror. Last week, someone dragged a big plastic trash can down the barn aisle and he got fairly nervous. The riding mower today was going across the gravel parking lot, and something was dragging in the gravel, creating a similar noise to the muck bucket and the trash can. It was just a little too much for Nico. He didn’t do anything stupid, but was obviously scared. I took him out of the crossties and had my boyfriend hold him while I finished up with the wound treatment. He was fine after that.

I think we will revisit the wash rack tomorrow and relax. I was concerned that he was going to freak while crosstied, so I didn’t want to put him back in today while the kid was still driving around on the riding mower.

And out of curiosity, what would you all do with a horse that sometimes kicks his back leg when he’s annoyed? He’s only done it a few times, and never AT someone, but I was just wondering what you would do if it were your horse? My first instinct is to be very aggressive with him next time it happens. I did tell the boyfriend, who was standing near his head, “If he kicks at me, get out of the way, because I’m going to beat the snot out of him.” Not that I would go completely crazy, but that short window of opportunity would be FULL of punishment.

~ by haffiegirl on April 27, 2008.