Recent content by Woolybear

I just saw this via facebook and think its very worthy of sharing http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/lets-get-emily-to-the-paralympics

Horses innards were designed by nature to deal with large volumes of poor quality roughage, everything else we give them is mollycoddling! there's no poisonous plants among it, it'll do them no harm.

I had a cat killed (Olive) years ago, by a 'retired' greyhound in the field behind my house (the dog walkers were trespassing) I was at work at the time, but my neighbour's children were traumatized by watching the whole thing, the cat was pursued full pelt across 4 acres of field by two off...

depends where in the country you are, I wouldn't say £800 is cheap for a young horse with no particular breeding or experience sounds about right-ish but I'd steer clear of a 5yr old if its a confidence giver/schoolmaster type you want tbh, something older, been there done that, even 'aged'...

I'm curious to know why that's a bad idea?

I had an Arab cross who was the same, I used to walk on a lunge line to an industrial estate locally that always had huge puddles after the rain, with a bucket and his feed in a rucksack and plonk the bucket of feed in the middle of a huge puddle, and wait.. and encourage... it took a while but...

I've always had play time with horses, playing tag/chase me games in the field/paddock and toys, footballs, space hoppers etc. I think Its just great fun and brilliant for bonding. Do you do it, what do you do and what do you/they get out of it would you say.

Rule 50 in the highway code under 'help yourself be seen' says riders should wear light coloured and flourescent clothing during the day. How many do? I think anything we can do to let drivers know that ALL horses are potentially unpredictable, or a potential hazard is no bad thing. So many...

lots of work teaching her to just stand still calmly, both under the saddle and in hand should help the situation too if she gets fidgety, anxious when being asked to be still.

In my experience horses who are cut late still display stallion behaviour, they develop with sexual maturity and unfortunately it doesn't leave them with their testicles; dominance issues in a herd situation with other horses, actually 'mating' mares and general stallion style melodrama.

Also as someone mentioned, keep the hacks, short and lead her out a lot in hand to keep adding to her encyclopedia of experiences, all the sights, smells and sounds of being out and about. If its anxiety based, she needs to become desensitized to possible 'threats' out in that big world...

Every horse is different and the reasons for evasive behavior are all different. I would try and establish the reason and I definitely wouldn't approach the problem with gadgets or restraints. Once you have ruled out all physical possibilities such as saddle pinching, bit, teeth, back etc then...

calm down its only hair, blimey if she'd fed unsoaked sugar beet or something, be angry, but get a sense of humour, the horse doesn't give a **** what his hair looks like.

horses are herd animals, of course he'd be happier in company.. more than one

Bit of a nightmare scenario... I think GG2B has some good points there. Pretty much either send it back or pay the balance and sell on either as an unbroken 'project' or have it professionally broken and sell on. Breaking youngsters is not for the uninitiated and if you don't know have an...