Napping - How would you deal with it?

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Elf On A Shelf

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As per title really.

I am only thinking on it as my new horse has gone from being reeeeeally lazy to nappy in the last week. Now some back ground info before you all jump on the - back, teeth, tack wagon! He is a 5yo TB who was broken as a yearling and flat raced as a 2yo, 3yo and until the very last day of his 4th year when he did a bit of a leg - hence why I have him. He was also a 6furlong sprinter so he will pretty much have only ever gone in a straight line, never having to bend. He will also have done very little trotting in training so he is finding this especially hard.

Because he started off by being very lazy I am 95% certain his napping is stemming from wanting to get out of work more than anything else. What he does is everytime we get to the corner near home he tries to throw his body sideways - you can do whatever you like with his head, the body still goes. The first time he did this it caught me by surprise so the next time we got to that corner he got a boot and a strong outer leg so he kept going round the corner. You could feel him resisting and wanting to go his way but thankfully he won't run through your leg. At the opposite end of the field he falls round the top corner in an effort to get back towards home quicker - again made much less severe by a strong leg contact. He is ok in walk, slightly worse in canter but trot is the pace he really tries it on in.

Whilst he isn't running through my leg and being dangerous I will keep going with the small circles and turning him every which way to confuse him so he hasn't got the chance to think about where he is going next. I will also try taking him out hacking in the next couple of days although my problem with that is I would have to be on my own and we have to go for at least a mile and a bit on a main busy road before we can get off of it and if he arses around I am kinda screwed.

He is a lifer so he has all the time in the world to turn into the show horse I want him to be and to be half fair to him he has only been properly ridden for about a month once he had recovered from his injury.

I should add I don't have a school to work in, just the field he lives in so there is plenty of space and a steep if short hill that gets the toad working.

Tea and biscuits for all who got this far :D
 
Echo Bravo said:
Could you take him back to basics
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I went back through all the basics of long lining, leaning over and walking when he was on strict walking duty for his recouperation. I didn't do the lunging as A. I hate lunging and B. He wasn't supposed to be doing circles. And C. he was only allowed to walk.

I suppose I could go back and lunge him in trot now he has got the all clear on his leg but I really am not a fan of it.
 
Yup, he was a lazy toad on the track too so he wore every kind of head gear - cheek pieces, visors or blinkers at some stage! Not all horses that wear head gear are necessarily naughty, we have some that just lack concentration or don't like horses right upsides them so we effectively hide them from view.
 
I'd be very inclined to take him back to lunging and long reining and get him listening to you.
From the sound of it, he finds it hard to balance in trot with your weight (not because you're heavy or anything but you possibly unbalance him) so it would be good to build up his muscles better from the ground. Even if he hares off in canter on the lunge I'd let him then when he does come down to trot praise him a lot and encourage him to work better and keep calling the 'trot on' or varieties on that theme so that he has no doubt that trot means trot and nothing else so that eventually you'll be able to take him up and down the paces as you wish. He needs to be able to learn trot well without you on him before he can do it mounted, they're probably muscles he's never had to use before so it's not easy for him. He'll never have had much basic training at all I wouldn't think so it will help him a lot to learn to balance his body first (I'd only use loose side reins too, none of the fancy short cut gadgets there are about, at least until he's a lot stronger.)
 
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tallyho! said:
send him to a racehorse retrainer?
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So after 2 days of a new trick from a horse who is having to relearn a whole new way of life with a person who he is only just getting to know and is just getting to know him you are suggesting I quit and send him to someone else? Uuuuuh huuuuuuh ...
 
EKW said:
So after 2 days of a new trick from a horse who is having to relearn a whole new way of life with a person who he is only just getting to know and is just getting to know him you are suggesting I quit and send him to someone else? Uuuuuh huuuuuuh ...
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No need to jump down my throat, it was a rational suggestion. Many people do and get good results.
 
The first time he did it he took me by surprise so he got away with 4 strides in the direction he wanted before he got spun in a circle and booted back in the direction I wanted to go in. Those first 4 strides were the only ones he managed to get as he is too polite to run through my leg - at the moment, he just leant his whole weight against it and moved about about 6in further than the line I wanted to take but he still went where I wanted to go. Made him do it a few more times but didn't push my luck by annoying him so went and played some games instead - ie rounding up the shetlands! It's only work he tried to get out of he is more than happy to zoom around after the wee beasts.
 
EKW said:
It's only work he tried to get out of he is more than happy to zoom around after the wee beasts.
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I think you've found your answer already!

Work to him does not mean schooling at all but fitness and gallop work. You have to change his mindset and one way would be to school him either out on hacks or for just five minutes at a time them move on to something that's fun to him, increasing the time for schooling as he accepts it easier. It's a huge mindset change for him, akin to putting a child in school for the first time so don't be too harsh on him; give him lots of fun as well as the new discipline you want him to learn. (you can easily school on hacks, leg yields etc to pass cars and so on) it's all about getting him to listen to you wherever you are.
A friend of mine schooled her very badly behaved reject buy ( last stop before Turner's, no kidding and even she thought she'd end up there with him that's how bad he was -) from napping, tanking off, rearing and scraping her along any old wall or falling down into ditches just for the hell of it, from all of that to winning Prix St George 3 years later and that was without access to a school except for once a month on lessons with her trainer; all done on the road while exercising so don't say it can't be done; it's not as easy certainly but it's not impossible so don't give up on him.
 
in the places that he naps how about some poles down, so he is having to think about his feet giving you a chance to play with his body, put them on a semi circle so you are naturally introducing a bend.

Lots of gentle flexing of the neck in walk and trot well even canter on a straight line, so you are starting to introduce natural suppleness and also starting to put his head/neck where you want it, work with your legs so if your flexing head to right, right leg on so he is again starting to bend around you. Only ever for a few strides then flex the other way.
Then carry this through to changes of rein and figures of eight, and then move it on to a large circle, and decrease size.

all of the above for me would be done over a period of time, the flexing on a straight around a week of just concentrating that and ignoring the cornering issue, then progressing once he is moving away from leg and actully bending around you, the general idea is that after all of that work the corners/bend etc are naturally there.
 
He sounds to me like he is taking the P. In your place I would stamp on that asap.
I would hack in company a bit more and have lots of non confrontational fun, providing lots of praise for good behaviour.

BUT depending upon your level of experience you could also potentially hack in spurs & drawreins/market harborough and really override/punish unwanted behaviour. I think young horses will often challenge your authority as 5/6 year olds and rather than faff around I would knock it on the head and make him do as he's told. If he really pushes back or you lack confidence/experience to have a confrontation then either have someone else hop on to straighten this out or be passive when he is facing the way you go and just use the extra kit to stop him spinning, rearing or running off.

He simply has to realise that you are in authority and that good behavior gets rewards and bad behaviour gets uncomfortable.
 
Ok so the last few days he has decided that napping isn't much fun! Especially after the crazy poles I set up for him! I had great fun! I built a maze out of varying colours of electric fence posts, jumps, poles and random buckets. He didn't know what he was going to come to next, where he was being sent next and what obsticle he would find there. I wish I had taken a picture of it as it was really a work of art!

There was no part of the maze that was solid and he could have got out of it at any time but he is too inquisitive. The first time round he had his eyes on stalks and wasn't overly keen on walking over poles on the ground. By the third time we went through a new route in the maze he strode out and was actively seeking new directions to go in - all on a loose rein and of his own accord, no thoughts of heading for home. After I turned him back loose I went to tidy up and he came back to the maze and started rooting through all of the buckets - typical bloke - stomach rules!

The next day we just had poles on the ground at various places round the field and I discovered that my 6f sprinter could jump - unintentionally. Today I will probably just put some random fence posts out.

Giving him something else to think about and aim for or around is keeping his brain ticking over and he seems to be enjoying this much more and isn't even half thinking about napping. He will have tomorrow off as I am away showing Shetlands all day and then on Sunday he is out to a show himself so I will give him a ride around there after his in-hand class.

He is a cheeky so and so and I know he has been trying it on and I expect he will try a new trick soon. He is just testing the boundaries and so far has been flumoxed in his plans by simply giving him a new toy to play with.
 
This post takes me back to when I was 13 and I had my first pony – my mother had hired a well know instructress/judge to teach me not how to ride but how to back a young horse (he was 4 at the time) … at one point we went through the ‘napping’ stage and her way of doing it was by getting a bucket of water and throw it at him (by this I don’t mean throw the entire bucket over us both but small amount which made him think twice about going towards the gate) lol … looking back very dangerous but worked very well and he soon stopped trying that one! Not a recommendation though (unless you have glue on your butt) x
 
I know the water trick lol! It's a good one - I have used it for loading before with a stubborn little toad! Water pistol + shooting it = pony in trailer!
 
EKW said:
I know the water trick lol! It's a good one - I have used it for loading before with a stubborn little toad! Water pistol + shooting it = pony in trailer!
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hahaha brilliant. my horse naps on hacks sometimes. Might get the other half to follow us with a water pistol in hand!!!
 
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