i feel clueless too, but then I will be around people more clueless than me and think wow, I have grown. Today was a big step for me. I went with a friend to take his new horse home for him, a totally green freaked out nervous GIANT 4 year old mare. Had never been in a trailer before. But my friend had been working with her daily at the sellers place and had her calm on the lead etc. But my trailer has no escape door so I told him I would lead her in. We went in, I was trying to juggle tying the rope and a little container of sweet feed, she tried to get her head in the little cup of sweet feed, I was trying to tye her with one hand, until that point she had been fairly calm, I tied her really sloppily and hurried out, nervous hemmed in with such a huge green hot horse, she turned and came barreling out with me and when she got to the end of the rope, freaked completely, threw herself into it with all her might, busted loose and ran over me. Knocked me down, no harm done except now she was a freaked out terrified wreck, blowing, shivering, wild eyed, here comes three big macho QH roper dudes "to help". I said thats ok, we are just gonna calm her down and start over, they said oh, we'll get her in there, my friend said I would rather wait til she is calm again, the roper dude said oh we'll get her in, and this went on a while and I just led her off and they followed saying they would get her in, and I just said "we will get her in after everyone leaves and things are quiet, it wont be a problem at all, I made a mistake and we need to really take our time when its quiet so she can start off on the right foot" and they said ok and left and my friend said he was so grateful. When she finally went in she was so scared, wild eyed, blowing, but it was her decision, no pressure except my friend walked in with her. No sweet feed btw, that had been my mistake. So you live and learn but mainly i was so proud for not being wishy washy and letting them take over when i knew what we were doing was right. Janice
-- even good horses have bad days sometimes.
