tigers_eye
Well-Known Member
Well, in a fairly mild sort of way! Deco started trotting and I took William on hound exercise.
Deco is my mare who is in foal and I've brought her back into gentle work. Today we ventured further into the woods and did a little road work and EVERYTHING was frightening. Bear in mind this is a horse who has only ever jumped clear round advanced BE tracks (well, she only did 2 but hey!). Possibley the most scary thing she has EVER seen in her life was some paint on the road that SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THERE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!!! She does this funny thing where she crouches down a bit like a cat and being rather vertically challenged anyway subsequently feels like a 12.2!
So, that over, I popped William in the lorry with another from the yard and we followed 2 others along to a hound exercise meet of the OBH about 20 mins away. Now, I can count the amount of times that I've seen hounds on my own hands, and William has definately never seen them. But he's a pretty laid back chap and I thought the experience would do him good. So we get into the field and he looks around at everybody and sees the hounds and hears the horn and thinks it's all akin to a lullaby. Then we set off and he wasn't too bad for the first half hour. He got progressively worse though - I stuck with the slow coaches as I wanted it to be as boring as possible for him to give us a fighting chance of being able to come out a second time. He just bounced and bounced and bounced though, and although he never kicked anything he did everything else and was really being a bit of a liability to himself. The elevation though! The self-carriage! I'm sure most of you can picture what I'm talking about
. Anyway towards the end I stopped to help a girl who'd been kicked quite badly and by then we were on stubble and he calmed right down, walking properly and being a lot more maleable. He sweated absolute buckets but I hope he realised that these things go on for a while and he's best off not wasting his energy. I think ideally next time we go out we will hopefully pick a very boring morning of cubbing where we get to stand still for 3 hours so he doesn't think it's all go.
Rather meandering post I know, just wanted to share today!
Deco is my mare who is in foal and I've brought her back into gentle work. Today we ventured further into the woods and did a little road work and EVERYTHING was frightening. Bear in mind this is a horse who has only ever jumped clear round advanced BE tracks (well, she only did 2 but hey!). Possibley the most scary thing she has EVER seen in her life was some paint on the road that SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THERE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!!! She does this funny thing where she crouches down a bit like a cat and being rather vertically challenged anyway subsequently feels like a 12.2!
So, that over, I popped William in the lorry with another from the yard and we followed 2 others along to a hound exercise meet of the OBH about 20 mins away. Now, I can count the amount of times that I've seen hounds on my own hands, and William has definately never seen them. But he's a pretty laid back chap and I thought the experience would do him good. So we get into the field and he looks around at everybody and sees the hounds and hears the horn and thinks it's all akin to a lullaby. Then we set off and he wasn't too bad for the first half hour. He got progressively worse though - I stuck with the slow coaches as I wanted it to be as boring as possible for him to give us a fighting chance of being able to come out a second time. He just bounced and bounced and bounced though, and although he never kicked anything he did everything else and was really being a bit of a liability to himself. The elevation though! The self-carriage! I'm sure most of you can picture what I'm talking about
Rather meandering post I know, just wanted to share today!
