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| remember when we could see the ground? |
My world is still iced over and not improving. Courage gets turned out every day, but it seems he's not enough of an idiot to play hard on top of ice. I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THAT.
However, that results in a creative effort on his part to burn excess energy without being too excessively naughty. While I applaud this effort (mostly), it has boiled down to me creating a list of entertaining things he's found to spook at. Here's last week's offenders:
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| innocent horse is innocent |
- Trucks outside the arena
- Applause on the radio (3x in one ride)
- Divots in the sand (multiple times per ride multiple days in a row until I finally kicked dirt over the offending divot)
- The mounting block
- Sand when it hits the mounting block
- Ground poles (DANGER)
- A lunge whip on the ground
- His own shadow (complete with a spin and a grunt!)
- His own reflection
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| DEMON LIGHT DEMON LIGHT |
- The wall (no particular section--just it's general existence)
- Sunbeams (full gallop AWAY FROM DEMON LIGHTS)
- The corner (another good gallop)
- An open stall door
- A closing stall door (yes the same stall. his friend lives in it. i don't know.)
- Nothing (horses gotta horse!)
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| ALERT |
And you were wondering why he's back in the martingale? The fact that I'm adding to this list every day is why. The good news is that we're getting LOTS of practice at going back to work after a distraction. Right?
Hah! This is why he is a queen, so much flair for dramatics.
ReplyDeleteHaha spooky horse is spooky. It's always fun being on edge about what the next magical spook will be over.
ReplyDeleteROFL Gotta love the winter <3
ReplyDeleteI hate riding in indoors because Spider also enjoys creating drama over everything in them. His favorite is leaping over the sunbeams and shadows as though they were 4 ft high laser beams or gaping chasms of death. This is the same horse who is absolutely unflappable while galloping down a trail, but he can't handle a sunbeam in the indoor.
ReplyDeleteyou see "divot" and he sees "quick sand that will SWALLOW HIM WHOLE OMG" lol
ReplyDeleteI almost died like 10 times on our road hack the other day becuase trees, grass, cars, cows, dogs, water, and grass are all scary.
ReplyDeleteSuch a brave soul. Courage, dip into your magical pool of courage and use it!
ReplyDeleteThose divots in the sand might actually be giant sinkholes. Gotta stay alert!
ReplyDeleteOMG the frigging mounting block right?! My girl can eat it/drag it around like her favorite toy until I am riding and then it clearly becomes a cheetah that is going to eat her.
ReplyDeleteC-Rage, just stop.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a day or three of some really good solid work on the longe line work would knock the edge off and the wind gust out of those sails. If he isn't going to burn the energy off himself, help him burn it off in a productive way that doesn't get you hurt in the process. Otherwise, expect everything to be scary and hope to ride it out.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, these all seem like legitimate excuses to freak out to me!
ReplyDelete