It has been an incredibly busy week. One of my coworkers has been on vacation so I needed to cover some of her hours (as she would cover mine). Phebes and I only got in one ride this week. Guess where we went?
HORSE EATING STICK REVISITED!
My first instinct was to hike up that hill and remove the stick from the gravel access road. Then I thought....(I do synapse a few brain cells now and again) what would that teach her? So the stick remains. I determined that I was going to ride my mare up the hill and confront the horse eating stick. Phebes had not forgot the incident that frightened her so bad she jumped out of four easyboot gloves. She was all stiff, high headed, snort and blow. GEEEZ LOUISE! So okee-dokey then, up the hill we go. Only slow this time, not at a training pace. She spots the stick, and you could feel the tension ratchet up in my little OCD mare OMG! There's the horse eating stick, NO! We can't go back there, don't you remember how bad it almost got me last time???? Deep breath, a supporting rein because she always spins to the left, ready for a little left leg in front of the girth. We CREEEEEEEEEEEP past the god awful stick. Horse shudders. We walk all around the stick. Horse sniffs the stick. Rinse & repeat three more times. She still hustled down the hill pretty snappy so I expect we will be revisiting that place many more times to come on future rides. However, I did RIDE home. ~E.G.
Something that might help your "OCD" horse is finding out what “Horsenality” is the term that Pat Parelli coined to refer to his system of understanding horses through their basic personality types. A combination of the words “horse” and “personality,” Horsenality™ is a convenient way to talk about horse psychology in the Parelli Natural Horsemanship method of horse training. http://www.parellinaturalhorsetraining.com/horsenality-horses
ReplyDelete