Obstacle Clinic 5/14/17

I mentioned in an earlier post that Jay and I planned to spend our anniversary (and, coincidentally, Mother's Day) at an obstacle clinic lead by our trainer, Jessica of Pony Peak Stangmanship. With Copper being sidelined, Jay took Pearl instead. Neither of us have been up on Pearl since she ejected us last year (yes, it's already been a year), but we thought the obstacle clinic would be a great way to start Jay and Pearl bonding a bit more. Copper will always be his "boy" and his heart horse, but Pearl is the one he's going to have to ride.

The girls loaded up into the trailer pretty nicely. Pearl had a moment of hesitation, but then stepped right in. She had never been in Mom and Bill's trailer before, so we gave her a moment to sniff it out. Skeeter tried to not get in the trailer, but only for a minute or two. She didn't want lead into the trailer, but when Bill hopped out, she self-loaded. Apparently, she didn't think there was enough room for both her and Bill in there.

We started the clinic from the ground, but with the horses tacked up. There were a lot of obstacles to explore: bridges, teeter-totters, horse "car washes", dangling strips of death (pool noodles), tires to climb, and tires to walk through, tarps. Pretty much anything that a horse could/would spook at was available for us to work with.

Skeeter still has to explore everything with her mouth ...

... I don't think she'll outgrow it

Jay leading Pearl over some poles, right before she tripped over the "tall" one.

The dangling strips of death were very difficult for Pearl. Eventually she got over herself.

Just hanging out, watching everyone else.

Once everyone had worked through the obstacles on the ground and were comfortable with them, we mounted up. Jay wasn't feeling riding Pearl, so Bill and Mom took turns working her through the obstacles.

Skeeter *hates* her Myler 3-ring combo bit.

Hates. it.

After a year of trying to get her to like it, I finally switched back to her Myler snaffle. The problem is, the snaffle is what Pearl's been going in, so they had to share. I rode Skeeter through the obstacles first (video at the bottom of post), then passed the headstall to Pearl.

Bill took a turn first, just in case she was feeling froggy.

Mom and Pearl sidepassing through the hula-hoops.

The horse car wash was no big deal for either horse.

Pearl, of course, was a perfect angel for both Mom and Bill, but when they asked if I wanted up, I declined. She had already had two people up on her in a short period of time and I wasn't going to push it. We decided to end on a great note with her and leave her be.

I did get back up on Skeeter once Mom and Bill were done with Pearl. It was not quite as nice as the first time. The first time I rode, she did okay, she's a bit of a looky-lou and wants to be in everyone's business, so she's a bit "dull". The second time, most of the other horses had moved out to do the obstacles in the pasture and there was only one other horse in the arena with us. Little Miss I-have-to-be-in-everyone's business took exception to that and wouldn't settle down. Jessica had me move her in figure eights and circles, never a straight line (so she couldn't get momentum to bolt).

She was mouthing the bit a lot and at first I couldn't figure out why, then I looked down when we were turning and realized that I hadn't re-adjusted it to fit her and the bit was just hanging in her mouth, not at all where it was supposed to be.

Nonetheless, she did okay with the figure eights and circles. We didn't work over any physical obstacles the second time, just worked with the mental obstacle of being left behind. She and I ride alone, either in the back yard or at our neighbor's arena, but it was the first time she'd been ridden where the temporary herd moved away and it was stressful for her.

We did lots and lots of circles and turns until she calmed down, then I dismounted and called it a day. Or tried to, anyway.

At the trailer, we untacked the horses, then I poured some water into a bucket and offered it to her. Good God, you would have thought I was coming at her with a torture device. Her head went up and she pulled back to try to get away. She was tied fast to the truck, so she couldn't go anywhere. As soon as I put the water bucket on the ground, all was good, but I didn't dare pick it up and offer it to her. Mind you, this is her water bucket - the one she drinks out of when we travel; the one that hangs in her stall at the horse expo. The only thing different was that I was holding it. Dork.

I had been a long day. We were tired, hot, sunburned, cranky, and ready to head home. Pearl loaded up into the trailer like a pro, but when it was Skeeter's turn that was a no-go.

Remember back when I took her to Posse training and she wouldn't load to go home? Same thing. She was d-o-n-e and was not getting in that trailer.

I tried to get her to load, Bill tried to get her to load. Bill and I both tried with the flag. Bill and Jay tried with the flag. It was.not.happening.

Unfortunately for Skeeter, I had an ace up my sleeve - Jessica was still there, so I went and asked for her help.

Skeeter was not going to get in that trailer, no way, no how., and she tried to tell Jessica that.

But Jessica's got the patience of a saint and no matter how many times Skeeter said "no", Jessica said "yes" until Skeeter decided it was in her best interest to just get in the damned trailer. It's incredible to watch Jessica with a horse that doesn't want to load. She's completely fair in what she asks of the horse, and if the horse needs a correction, she gives one, and then doesn't hold any grudges. I, on the other hand, get pissed off and hold grudges, so Skeeter and I get into a battle of wills.

By the time Jessica was done, Skeeter loaded up nicely, stood for a few minutes, then backed off nicely when asked. They repeated it a couple of times to reinforce the idea, and then she sent us home.

It was an excellent day (even with the trailer issue), and I feel like we got a lot accomplished.

Out of Order

Not as in broken, but as in not in chronological order. I'm so far behind on the blog that I am just trying to post things as I remember them. I post most stuff "in real time" (sort of) on our FB page.

Back in April, when I was looking to take Skeeter to our 40-hour Spring Training for the Posse (which didn't happen), I wanted to give her as much of an advantage as I could. I know that balloons and kids and fairs all go hand-in-hand, so I thought it would be a good idea to torture desensitize the horses to balloons.

On April 16, I set off to the store to buy a dozen, not thinking about how icky I would feel once they were loaded in my car. I'd just started re-reading IT and the night before just read the passage about the thousands of balloons lined up under the bridge. I put the balloons in the car, sat in the driver's seat and had a "moment".

No, Pennywise was not with these balloons. I had to keep telling myself that.

On the way home, I plotted how I was going to handle the introduction. If I just tied them to the fence, the horses would simply go to the other side of the pen and ignore the scary things. If there were going to be fireworks, I didn't want to be in the pen with them initially, so I had to come up with some way to lure them *to* the balloons.

Having food-motivated horses sometimes makes things very easy. I decided to tie the balloons to their big feed tub and put goodies in there that they couldn't live without (black oil sunflower seeds and grandma cookies).


In case you don't have 13 minutes and change to watch the horses figure out the balloons, here are some stills. Skeeter, being so food motivated, was the first to approach, followed closely by Pearl. Only when Copper was certain the balloons weren't horse-eating ghosties did he approach.

I was thankful for the breeze, as it caused the balloons to move erratically - sometimes the horses got bonked in the face by the colorful ghosties and they didn't die.

Eventually the balloons became a complete non-issue, so I tied them to the fence just to keep them in the horses' minds.

You can see how concerned they were.

I ended up having to take the balloons down the next day because someone (I don't know which) had started to pop them and I worried about them inhaling pieces of balloon. When I took them down, I stood by the fence and popped every single one of the remaining ghosties with my pocket knife while the horses looked on, very disappointed that I was taking their toys away.

I'm going to call balloon training a success.

Goofing Around (Picture heavy)

There are some really cute videos of horses playing with toys floating around Facebook. There's the one of the horse playing with the squeaky toy and then there's this one of a horse playing with a giant stuffed animal. The videos are great fun to watch, and it gave me ideas for more desensitizing, so a few weeks ago I headed to the toy store.

I picked out a couple of squeaky dog toys at one store, and when the cashier was checking me out, he asked what kind of dog I had. He was a bit surprised when I told him the toys were for our horses and asked if they liked dog toys. Who knows? They've been playing with a milk jug full of rocks, maybe they'll appreciate the dog toys.

The first store I went to didn't have giant stuffed animals, so I went to a different store. There were some amazingly huge stuffed animals, but I had no intention of going broke for a toy that was going to get dragged through horse poop.

Horse toys

Allie-bird asked nicely for one of the toys. I caved.

Impatiently, I waited for Jay to come home from work so we could go play with the horses. I wanted to see what they would do. Skeeter is usually very curious and brave, so I expected that she would be the first to play with the new toys. Oh boy, was I wrong! Miss Pearl and Copper were the brave ones. Skeeter took a sniff and then went away.

It really wasn't too terribly exciting. We could have caught the horses and forced the issue, but I prefer to let them explore on their own. We played with the toys for a while, then L.E. came over and played for a bit as well. As much as Skeeter pretends she doesn't want to play with the monkey, she claimed it when L.E. was playing with her.

Copper claimed the giant bunny and will allow the others to sniff, but if they thought about playing with it, he moved them away from it. Eventually the new wore off, so we tied the toys to the sacrificial post just to see what they would do.

The sacrificial post amused us two-leggeds a lot more than it amused the four-leggeds. We got bored of watching them do nothing with the critters and went back in the house. A bit later, I looked out the window just in time to see Skeeter rip the monkey's face clean off. She had taken him off of the pole, had one foot on his belly and his face in her mouth. Game over for the monkey.

RIP Sad Monkey

I fetched the monkey from the pen, along with the guts I didn't want them snuffling up. Poor Skeeter looked so forlorn about the fact I took her monkey away that I felt bad and finished gutting it, so she could have the 'hide' back to play with.

About an hour later, Jay looked out the window to see the rabbit carnage strewn about the pen. The rabbit was much larger than the monkey and had a lot more guts for us to clean up. A lot more.

RIP Floppy Bunny. You were a good bunny.

I'm going to pat ourselves on our backs for doing a reasonably good job of desensitizing the horses - these were scary things and they didn't care one whit. They were just boring to watch with them. No fun crazy horse videos from our place, that's for sure.