Monday, February 04, 2008

I Think We'll Live

One of the great joys of horse ownership is realizing how "scary" common every day items truly are to your equine. A hose being drug through the arena, ladders against a wall, flower boxes, and fire. On Saturday morning I introduced Dobby to the notion of the "open flame." I'm happy to tell all of you, we both survived.

Initially, Dobby had his reservations. I mean, it's this flaming crackling thing with smoke. WEIRD! SCARY! He was jittery, but after about 15 min of riding with the fire burning in the pit outside he gave up the spooking, and surrendered to his curiosity. After a good long gander out the arena doors we moved on and had a nice quiet ride.

I'm a big believer in scaring the hell out of your horse. If I could find someone with a cannon, or a flame thrower I'd absolutely have them shoot the thing off while I was working with my horse. It's great for our partners to encounter new and different things, just as it is wonderful for we humans to travel and experience new and exciting things. It is my opinion that a "worldly" horse is a horse who has lead a full life, one who is assured of himself and can move through many sitations with ease.

What I'm leaving out here, is that depending on ths situation: the lawn chair, hose, ladder, open flame might be terrifying not only to the horse, but the rider as well. What we have to remember as riders in such situations, is that we are smart logical bipeds, who are very familiar with such things. By golly, we invented them! We've all felt the horror in the moment when our horse stops listening to us, and starts to hear only his instincts to run. It's okay, small circle...don't worry! Your horse should trust you enough to know when you are confident and secure standing next to a burning fire, he can be too.

Worst comes to worst, get off and look at the "monster" but don't give in to the fear. Ride away from the thing, and creep closer as your partner regains his confidence. There is no other situation in our human lives in which we would allow a garden hose to ruin our activity. Keep that thought close to you as your horse learns to trot over the hose, and when you hang your winter coat over that ladder against the wall.

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