June 4, 2011

The Horse Report



OH, this horse was a looker.  Mama was CMK nice, nice arabian.  This gelding was the nicest horse I've looked at.  He looked like the old bloodline arabians.  But as the music implies...   I darned near did bite it.  I spoke with the owner, found out when he was ridden last which was a week ago.  First clue was in cross ties Doug attempted a pulse and the horse just went into a panic.  So he just backed off and the owner quieted him down.  I went onto tacking the horse up, walk around to the off side and he sees me there and again panics in the cross ties and my saddle heads to ground, and I catch it (thank you Lord for saving the trusty crestridge saddle).  Horse again settles in and I finish saddling.  Owner assures me horse has never reared, bucked, or bolted, and has never unloaded anyone.   I'm a trusting soul.  I point him away from the barn, and settle up and into the saddle real quiet like.  Away we go!  He gives a real good attempt at bucking.  I'd have one-reined him in, but she has him rigged up in a martingale contraption, so much for that.  His gait is actually a pace.  It was pretty comfortable.  Horse is worried about his pasture mates, worried about me, and very worried about my hubby.  He spots him along the fenceline and nearly dumps me with a big sideways spook.  Doug asks if I want to rate the speed of his gait with the garmin, uh.....no, I don't think so.  The owner thought that perhaps the level II parelli trained horse was unsettled because of my propensity for patting on the horse.  Huh?  Horses should be stroked, not patted, they find it upsetting.  Poor Phebes and Cree, their life must be truly miserable because I slap 'em on the butt every time they come in or out of the barn, their ears don't even twitch.  I'm beginning to think that I could NEVER sell Phebes as she is so highly trained (in comparison to the horses I've looked at and ridden so far) that nobody could possibly afford to buy her.  I'm thinking I should ask about $20,000.00 because she can indeed, be quietly saddled, mounted, walk, trot, and canter without killing me for the most part, can be tied with a lowly lead rope, load and unload, have her pulse taken, and her ears clipped, and she's so bombproof I can pat her whenever I want to, and during fly season she will run to me to be heartily slapped in order to mash a horse fly. Her only vice is motorized vehicles and horse killing sticks!  But I digress. 

Just for the sake of making the five hour round trip at least interesting (and because I suspected the outcome and I'm just sometimes evil...), I asked her to load him into the horse trailer.  She did finally get him in with a whole lot of cajoling, and then she tried again, and it took a whole lot more cajoling, she's doing it the parelli way I'm told and she says the horse had a trailer loading accident once and isn't fond of the horse trailer.  I really, really....should not have got on him at all. He was gorgeous! But another one bites the dust. ~ E.G.

3 comments:

  1. You do have to wonder what exactly people are talking about when they talk about training. My spooky-ass rescued flighty untrusting TB mare will let anyone catch, halter, lead, tie, pick up feet, groom, load and unload her. She is a little touchy about her ears, I think it is the phase of the moon rather than the person. These things were all impossible when I got her and were the first things to fix. I do not consider her trained, she is unpredictable under saddle - for now.
    And horses will get over trauma as much as we let them. My TB jumper managed to get in a wreck all by himself in the trailer and ended up with all four feet in the air. This took at least 10 years off of MY life, but I got him righted, continued on, he did unload rather briskly, but loaded up the next day. I think because I expected him too.
    I don't begrudge you the horse hunt, it is frustrating. How far are you willing to go? There is a very cute TWH mare 15h at a rescue in Connecticut. Too far? Know anyone up there who could check her out? I can send you the link, she keeps popping up on my FB page and everytime I think of you.

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  2. I always have the owner ride them first..... Too many people hurt while trying out horses for sale that turn out to be stupid idiots

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  3. Okay, I gotta throw my two cents in here on Parelli. Parelli started out with some good ideas. It was nothing particularly new or earth shattering, but it worked. Then he met and married Linda and things got loony. Now Parelli is largely done by middle aged women who haven't a clue what the heck they are doing. They blindly play the games and follow all the "rules" without any real idea what the purpose is. The end result is that you wind up with wacky horses who react extremely bizarrely to things. I've trained several horses who were Parelli'ed. I spent months undoing all the weird stuff before I could reinstall all the "normal" buttons.

    One woman I know has the most gorgeous Hanovarian the same age as Mika. He's the calmest thing in the world. She's afraid of riding him (the worst thing I've EVER seen him do is to just kinda veer off in the wrong direction in slow motion) so she just waves sticks at him from the ground and makes him walk over tarps.

    Anyway, I ALWAYS make the owner get on first. I want to watch THEM groom, saddle and ride. If the horse isn't a psycho and doesn't kill them, I'll get on. If the horse hasn't tried to kill me, THEN I'll do all the messing with them on the ground.

    You oughta bring Phoebes up to ride around my house. All I've got are roads! Semis, trucks, cars, you name it, it all blew Mika's little mind at first. He had to get over it. He lives behind my house on a fairly busy country road. And the only place I can ride are on the roads! He got over himself after a month or so. Now he doesn't usually even blink at traffic.

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