ycbm
Einstein would be proud of my Insanity...
I'm looking to compare notes on what other people would do with this horse. I'm not 'unhappy' with how things are progressing, but open to alternative ideas or just support for my current methods.
The horse is six, and I have another six year old who is forward and cheeky and way, way ahead of him in his schooling. I broke both horses at four, though I did not do the initial backing of this one because I was busy with the other. He was handed over sat on, having walked and trotted in an arena, where videos showed him to be very dead to the leg. Both horses have EPSM, successfully treated.
Roll forward to today. He is the spookiest creature I've ever owned, and I've owned a few! He is petrified by grass blowing in the wind, or his own shadow moving, and will spin away at lightning speed. His other speciality is to stop, from any pace, canter to halt with no warning at all. He is backward thinking, but genuinely frightened, as all this nonsense is accompanied by foal licking gestures.
He is the same on a hack, only he does not spin, and he's the same whether he has company or not.
BUT I have trained him to be sharp off my leg to a light leg aid, which he does beautifully unless he is fixating on something scary. And he's not a 'two steps forward one step back' horse. Progress is always made, only agonisingly slowly. At six, he can only just canter a twenty metre circle.
I don't reassure his silliness, I ignore it and praise forward movement. I don't hit him. If I did he would rear or buck. I don't confront this for two reasons. The first is that his fear is genuine even if it's unjustified. The second is that I'm too old for that kind of thing now! I have started to scold him, and that seems to have a small effect in making him bolder. I am also spinning him to stop him planting and that works very well to encourage him to go forward towards things he's tried to spin away from.
So, what would you do with him? I've told him he has two years, when I hit a BIG birthday and I definitely won't want the kind of silly stuff he did today just because it was a bit windy. If he wasn't such a pretty boy he'd have gone long ago!!
The horse is six, and I have another six year old who is forward and cheeky and way, way ahead of him in his schooling. I broke both horses at four, though I did not do the initial backing of this one because I was busy with the other. He was handed over sat on, having walked and trotted in an arena, where videos showed him to be very dead to the leg. Both horses have EPSM, successfully treated.
Roll forward to today. He is the spookiest creature I've ever owned, and I've owned a few! He is petrified by grass blowing in the wind, or his own shadow moving, and will spin away at lightning speed. His other speciality is to stop, from any pace, canter to halt with no warning at all. He is backward thinking, but genuinely frightened, as all this nonsense is accompanied by foal licking gestures.
He is the same on a hack, only he does not spin, and he's the same whether he has company or not.
BUT I have trained him to be sharp off my leg to a light leg aid, which he does beautifully unless he is fixating on something scary. And he's not a 'two steps forward one step back' horse. Progress is always made, only agonisingly slowly. At six, he can only just canter a twenty metre circle.
I don't reassure his silliness, I ignore it and praise forward movement. I don't hit him. If I did he would rear or buck. I don't confront this for two reasons. The first is that his fear is genuine even if it's unjustified. The second is that I'm too old for that kind of thing now! I have started to scold him, and that seems to have a small effect in making him bolder. I am also spinning him to stop him planting and that works very well to encourage him to go forward towards things he's tried to spin away from.
So, what would you do with him? I've told him he has two years, when I hit a BIG birthday and I definitely won't want the kind of silly stuff he did today just because it was a bit windy. If he wasn't such a pretty boy he'd have gone long ago!!