People are Crazy

Meet Trep. He's the giant chestnut gelding in the barn who is not Cuna. You can easily tell them apart--Cuna meets you at the front of his stall looking for cookies. Trep you go find in the back of his run while dodging hooves and teeth.

He is the definition of a mean bastard.

Don't mistake me. Trep is treasured by his owner because he is an amazing riding horse and as such, he has every possible spectrum of vet care to make him as comfortable as is possible for an equine to be.

It's not a pain issue--it's just Trep. He's cranky on the ground and we deal with it.

One of the ways of dealing with it is carefully managing his social interactions. When new people are in the barn, we ALWAYS warn them not to pet him or feed him treats. He isn't a "bad guy", but if he looks like he's going to hurt you, he will. We don't make a joke of it and we're not teasing.

More than 50 percent of the time when I give that warning, the warned person IMMEDIATELY becomes attracted to Trep by some sort of giant magnet. They feel the need to expose to him their soft tissue and appendages while wrapping their arms around his head or neck.

Seriously. It's weird. He's not misunderstood. He's not mistreated. He's not looking for a sugar mommy. He's definitely not poorly treated.

I warn people for their own good and they ignore me. They ignore his owner. They ignore his trainer.

Wtf, people. Do you have a deathwish?

My only solution is to pick the calmest, nicest horse in the barn and start a story about him. "This is Cuna. He's a mean ass bastard horse. Stay away from him or you might get singed from his fire breathing nostils." If I said that, you probably couldn't pry the women off him.

Reflections

The more I think about it, the more I think that I really caused the problem we had yesterday by not listening to Izzy because I didn't trust what she was telling me. She does some nervous cribbing when I put her girth on. I thought that was because I used too short of a girth once and tightened it right away, but it could have been her letting me know that she didn't like the saddle. She didn't want to stand by the block because she was uncomfortable. I had to carry a whip to get her to go forward because her back wasn't comfortable?

Maybe the last one is a stretch. It's hard to say. Cathy recommended using a different pad with my saddle that lifts the front a bit. I think I'll put it on her tomorrow or Friday, and just lunge her in it. The sweat pattern should tell me if that changed the fit to something more comfortable without me sitting in it to add pressure. I'll recheck the fit of both my saddles, and probably lunge her in the wintec the next day to see the sweat pattern from that one. My friend the masseuse is going to check her back Thursday night and let me know what she finds. I'm trading her tack cleaning for that, which is wonderful.

I'm really concerned about this... if it is just a pain thing, I don't mind working through it. We'll eliminate the pain and she should go back to normal or even be better. If, on the other hand, this was largely an attitude problem, then I don't know what to do. I can deal with a lot of vices, but I don't really want to mess with a rearing horse. That's just bad news waiting to happen. In my mind, I keep making Izzy the saint and me the horrible first time owner who didn't notice all the signs, but I'm tempted to wonder if that's true. Is she too far gone? What then? I could hardly sell a horse like that. I can afford some training, but not indefinitely. I'd want to send her to a trainer before this became a major issue, but I wouldn't want her to go and be good for them, and then start up for me again.

On the bright side, Cathy seems to think I can deal with it. She's worked with me for like 11 years now, and she has a good grasp on my abilities. I do ride in the morning when she does most of her training, so I usually have some form of supervision and I can always ask her for advice. She's not at an age where she just wants to hop on a horse like this, but she's trained me long enough to trust me to do it.

If only I trusted myself as much... I'll keep you updated.