Sanity

Sometimes I wonder if my horses really are sane, or if it's just that I don't make them act insane. Take Izzy as an example. When I got her, she was supposedly crazy. She's nothing but a doll now. She's only spooked with me twice, and she doesn't get rattled at the shows I've taken her to. We had a horse gallop by within ten feet of us, and she just looked at it.

Izzy's previous owner still boards her new horse at the same barn. When she got him, he was quiet but untrained for the most part. He had supposedly been a ranch horse before. Today, the owner comes and gets him out. He is pretty quiet as she gets ready, but he gets away from her while she's trying to lunge him and races around the arena while she keeps telling him loudly in a baby-talk way that he's being stupid. I have Cassie in the arena at this point, but she's too good a girl to be phased by some young thing running around. In fact, my biggest problem was stifling my overwhelming desire to laugh out loud at this woman. Clearly, the horse just needs some exercise, but she persists in following him around yelling, "Whoa!" as if that means anything to him. When she finally did catch him, 5 minutes later, she put him back on a lunge line. Now tired, he walked around and she told him to "walk" in a very loud voice every few strides.

Maybe I'm just talking crazy here, but it seems to me that if she wasn't so obtuse, her horse would be fine. She had Izzy, who was supposedly crazy, but isn't. She has Ben, who wasn't crazy, but now she thinks he is. Before both of them, she had another gelding who was supposed to be crazy... I saw him act that way, but only when she was around.

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In an Izzy update, she's doing very well. Due to the past few days' downpour, the arena was a lot like slush, but we used the puddles as steering practice. She's starting to understand that she can halt using body cues, turn, and trot. Unfortunately, she so pleased with her ability to trot that she tries to pick it up just about always. "Look what I can do!" Show off. :-p