On 1/15/08, Janice McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > He has a screw loose i think. he is ground > trained/trained to death. does tricks for godssakes. He has been > trail ridden thousands of miles. Does fine in small groups, goes > insane with excitement in large groups. Its his thing to get over.
> You have to work on > that right? Even the best horse in the world can be bad sometimes and > you have to work thru it or it doesnt go away i think. > You know what I am an intelligent person who could learn to do just about any job out there. I could be an attorney or a politician on capitol hill. I could do all the book learning and be taught how to argue my point. I might be good at it but I would be miserable. I hate to argue and confrontations. I would be sick to my stomach the whole time. Am I deficient because of this, I don't thick so. I think some horses are just better suited mentally for some situations/disciplines than others. If a horse is conformationally unable to barrel race or tolt, we won't physically force him to do that because it's cruel and could be harmful. Why not look at what a horse can mentally handle and what makes him happy mentally? Likewise, some horses are much better at going out alone than others. There are ways to train a horse to be more confident and maybe that's all they need, but what about the horse that truly hates to go out alone (maybe I'm less comfortable and am making him a nervous wreck)? Is it fair to him to make him go out alone all the time? I could become more confident as an attorney but if someone made me sit in the middle of divorce negotiations, I would put a bullet in my head after doing it for a while. (And I as a human am supposed to have more intelligence and reasoning ability than a horse.) Yet there are people out there that love the adrenaline of the fight and the confrontations. My OTTB/QH loved to run. I was training him for competitive trail and getting him well conditioned. Long slow distance is what you are supposed to do. Out on the trail alone I finally let him pick up a canter, well it turned into a gallop. A racehorse gallop. He's flying thru the trees, around corners, jump the little creek. No way a one rein stop would work and pulling on the bit, seesawing - well he just grabbed that bit between his teeth cause he was gonna have a run. He was not scared. He just felt good and wanted a good run and I went along for the ride in basically a jockey/jumping 2 point position because I had the best balance this way. After about 3/4 of a mile of this I figured he'd slow down because we will be going down a hill then we'd have to cross the street. Well he didn't slow down but practically did a sliding stop at the street:) After that I realized that I just needed to let him get in a good run from time to time. After most trail rides, (he would always go slow going home vs his fast trot going out) I tried to make sure that I let him gallop the last quarter mile home up our driveway (safest place). BTW his pulse was lower at a canter than it was a trot. Some horses just love to go fast. I taught him Western pleasure and we used to enter classes at fun shows. He was always the fastest one, but I actually had one judge ask me if he was the same horse I was riding in the morning English classes. He got a little wired in the Hunter hack where you had a few jumps and a hand gallop. I taught him to go slow but if that's all we ever did he would have gone nuts. One of the ways I knew he needed to retire is that he didn't want to gallop or canter up the driveway anymore. The only cue he needed for that was for me to lift myself up just a bit and say 'okay go'. He's now on to his retirement career with his previous owner who rode him in 4H and jumping and is teaching her little sister to ride and going to shows to babysit the mares left at the trailer. His owner trains ponies for hunter shows and sells them for 20,000 plus to rich people so their kids can get ribbons. Anyways, been typing this between patients and am probably rambling, but I think Walls is neither nuts or has a screw loose. He's just your perfect baby who loves to go fast and isn't crazy about some situations that he comes across. -- Anna Southern Ohio
