Today was a rough day in terms of horse play. I was really excited when I got down to the barn. I was looking forward to a fun ride with Gingy. It wasn't to be, he chose this day to test me majorly. Oh well, I'm not sorry I knew we had to have our big conflict one way or another.
He was really good about being groomed except for getting his feet picked out. He actually cocks the back ones for me, but he tries to take the front ones away from me. He'll pick up a front foot and just as soon as it's in the air he slams it down again. So I took to tapping his lower leg with the hoof pick until he lifted his foot, as soon as he put his foot down again I would start tapping again. Holding his foot in the air is a trick he knows from way back, so teaching it wasn't a problem. He remembered quickly and soon he was holding his foot up nicely. Then I started holding it for him. At first he kept trying to pull it away, this time I matched his energy and then some by tapping on his hoof. When he was more willing about letting me hold it, I worked on getting him to put down nicely. He eventually got that too.
After the foot problem was solved I saddled and bridled him. He was really good about that too. Trevor had reminded me last time I saw him that warming Gingy up seemed to cause him to put less effort in later on, so I mounted right away. I did some neck bends and that's where he started testing me. Bending to the right was fine with him, but bending to the left was something he didn't plan on doing. He would give a little to the pressure, then pull away again. I managed to get a couple of decent bends, but I didn't feel like he was giving it his all. Still I moved on anyway, because I was really bored with the whole thing.
When we started walking down the fence in the pasture he got pretty nervous about some buckets and a tank that were lined up next to each other. I dismounted and walked him up to the scary things. Then it was like his mind cleared and he remembered that the "black creatures" were just rubber tubs LOL. After that he was fine, so I got on again. Next I tried doing the figure eight with him at the trot. I knew that this was something that he could do so I didn't expect him to be so difficult about it. I guess the figure eight was just what he chose to test me.
We worked on it for easily an hour and by that time I was pretty much out of strategies. I had walked him on the pattern, trotted him around one cone and walked him around the other, made him go up hills, etc, still he didn't want to do a simple figure eight at the trot. I'll be honest, I started crying. I was done with being mad, now I was just sad to the point of weeping because I hate conflict and I hated to keep making him work so hard. Even as I cried, I kept him on the pattern. Over time I felt calmer and I came up with a few ideas. I decided to break the whole pattern down even though I knew he could do it at the trot. I thought that maybe this way I could work out some of the kinks without having to sit the trot the whole time. First I got him doing nice collected circles around one cone then around the other. The cone that closest to the barn was the harder of the two. Gingy wanted to go sideways toward the barn when he came around the cone. I think we probably spent half an hour on circling around that one cone. Once he did stop avoiding the circle by going sideways, things went more quickly. I did the figure eight with him at the walk until he did that nicely. Now that he had decided he could circle both cones without avoiding the only thing we had trouble with was that he did uneven circles. It took me some time to come up with a game that caused him to want to do even circles. My strategy was to make him follow through with whatever radius he chose for going around the cone. After awhile he found that doing really big circles was to much work and doing really small circles was uncomfortable. Finally we had it all worked out at the walk. I didn't really want to try trotting, but I knew that I needed to since that was what I had asked for in the beginning. I asked him to start trotting which he did without too much hesitation. From there it only took about four laps before he really tried. I was very relieved when I let him stop after his good try. All of my time and effort had come to something and I hadn't given up.
I knew it was a real success because of Gingy mainly. When I stopped him he was collected somewhat and his neck bends were good. Then when I dismounted he snuggled up next to me. When I walked away he came up beside me willingly and with a very good expression. I guess we'll see what tomorrow brings, I think it will be easier.
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