Hopefully, I can smell some changes afoot at the stable =] But I won't jinx myself by telling you my hopes now, I can only wait and see that they happen!
It was sooo hot today and it's only gonna be hotter tomorrow. Great. Things started off quite scarily with Nina. My brother was lunging her while I was lunging Brie and I look over and just see Nina start bucking like a mad woman and yell over "What are you doing to her???" and he's like "Nothing, I don't know what's wrong!" and she starts spinning and yanks my brother with her, wrapping the pisador all around her legs and violently shaking her head. He's trying to run around her fast enough to untangle the pisador and I just yell to him to drop the rope because she'll be able to get out of it (it's pretty short) so he drops it and runs screaming for my mom to come see what's wrong while Nina is just spinning around and falling over herself in the sand, not really trying to run anywhere but throwing her head all over the place. She had the rear end collector (fruit basket) on and that had fallen off to the side and now I was just worried that she would step in the net part of it and get stuck. I couldn't really do anything with Brie so I just get close enough to try to see what's wrong when my mom gets there with my dad and they both hold her head down long enough to untangle her and for me to spot the problem: there's a HUGE bee in her forelock! I tell them and my brother runs for a brush and my mom tries to take it out with that, but it's stuck in there so she just mashes it and my brother runs back with a comb so she can comb the squished bee out of Nina's hair. I don't know if it bit her or if she just got scared from the buzzing or could feel it stuck under her hair, but the poor baby was so shaken up she was sweating and huffing and puffing! Everyone took her back into the aisle and patted her off with a cool towel until she stopped breathing so hard. Poor thing. I'm glad my brother dropped the rope when I told him otherwise he would've been trampled underneath her if he had still been hanging on two seconds later!
After all the commotion and another huge round of bug spray, we all started riding. Nina seemed pretty relaxed afterwards and it was Harry who was giving my mom a hard time. That sucker doesn't want to flex to the right again! He kept trying to rear on her. I can't wait to get a hold of his punky butt tomorrow if he tries to pull that with me!
Brie was a little canter machine today. She turned everything she could into a canter step! Sometimes I regret teaching her that, but then I forget when we have great romps outside like we did today. On our first trip outside, we saw a deer. That freaked her out. I said that it's pretty great that she didn't bolt while I was on her, but I doubt that freezing in place would help her in the wild if she was faced with a mountain lion or something! All circumstantial I guess, since she'll never be out in the wild as long as I have her! She'd probably die from a lack of carrots.
On our second trip outside with everyone else, she was a total doll. I had a completely loose rein, I was literally holding it with only three fingers and she was walking beautifully! Her favorite thing is to charge up the little hill that's on the property and look over everything like a watch-tower.
Now that Brie is getting better at walking (keyword: WALKING) outside, Harry needs to get over himself. He's such a ball of nerves whenever we go outside and if Nina walks 10 feet a head of him or decides to stop and turn the other way to look at something, it's like the world is crashing down around him! He's such a follower and Nina's his leader. He needs to get a little independence. =]
Showing posts with label resistense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resistense. Show all posts
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Day 69
We had a visit from the farrier today.
We used this farrier, Sam, back in September and really liked her, but then we got caught up with farriers the rest of the barn was bringing up from Florida. We called her out because the latest Florida farrier wasn't answering our calls and we needed their hooves trimmed ASAP before the show this weekend.
I think it's the funniest thing that Brie is anxious in the arena but she absolutely LOVES getting her hooves done. She was pretty much sleeping while Sam was filing them down! This is the first farrier visit I've been present for with Harry, so I was a bit anxious. He reared twice, tiny rears mind you, because Sam was just holding his foot up while talking to us and not really paying attention to him. I guess he's just impatient because after she stopped answering our questions about hooves he was just fine.
Nina.
What a beast. I never realized how feisty she is until today.
Now, the reason why I thought Brie's scenario was funny is because Nina is the exact opposite. She's the lazy little horse in the arena that you have to keep on her to keep moving, but she goes BALLISTIC when you try to trim her hooves.
Don't get me wrong, this is NOT GOOD.
She was absolutely terrible. Today was pretty much the worst nightmare of all farriers.
Since the last time a farrier was out, my brother has been working with her to keep her front feet out for longer. We used to think it was just a balance issue. Today proved that theory wrong, but I'll get to that. Normally, for the longest time now, I stretch Brie's front legs out before I go to lunge her. I do this both simply for the purpose of stretching and to free any pinched skin under the girth. My brother never did this with Nina, so I figured that it would help in those two ways and helping her get used to having her legs stretched in front of her mid-air.
Well, that did help. She was still nervous as all heck, shaking like a leaf. At that point, while Sam was doing the front hooves, I still believed it was a balance issue because of how much her muscles were twitching. The point is that she managed to get her front hooves done. Okay, part one accomplished. Sam now moved on the the back legs.
Horrible. She kicked Sam against the stall a handful of times. Finally, when Sam got a hold of Nina's leg, she tried to stretch it out in front to put it on the hoof stand. She had it there no more than a minute before Nina pulled away and pulled the stand with her. Understandably, she freaked. She jumped to try to get away from it but it only got caught under and between her back legs. TOTAL freak out, she reared, flipped around in the cross-ties and whipped the stand into the stall across from Brie.
So that was unacceptable, but we gave her a moment to calm down. Not happening. After that point, Nina was done. After kicking Sam away a couple more times and getting the stand stuck between her back legs again, after a stint with both of her ears and her nose being twitched, she was still trying to kick Sam away. It's now obvious that either A) She's being a brat or B) something happened that's completely busted down her trust.
Now, it's actually pretty hard for me to reach a conclusion here. When Nina was a baby, she had a trimming incident with Andre and he had to put her on the ground to trim her and her leg swelled up. That could be the cause for lack of trust. But then almost a hundred trimmings later and this having never happened again, no other bad incident, she's still going at it. This could be her being a brat.
What I've come to is that we need to rebuild this relationship with her with discipline. Up until now, we've all looked on her being the baby, the cute little baby Nina that we bought 3 years ago, the little baby Nina who could do nothing wrong. We never really disciplined her and just hung on her and let her hang on us. This has resulted in a lack of respect on her end. She needs to be able to trust that we won't let anything harm her and we need to stop treating her like an oversize dog (because chances are you won't even let your dog get away with bossing you around).
Now I just need to get this through to the rest of my family. Showing isn't everything. You can go in and lose a few shows and it's not devastatingly horrid. Manners and respect for humans is everything. You can't go into a farrier or vet session with no respect and no discipline because you can lose a life.
We used this farrier, Sam, back in September and really liked her, but then we got caught up with farriers the rest of the barn was bringing up from Florida. We called her out because the latest Florida farrier wasn't answering our calls and we needed their hooves trimmed ASAP before the show this weekend.
I think it's the funniest thing that Brie is anxious in the arena but she absolutely LOVES getting her hooves done. She was pretty much sleeping while Sam was filing them down! This is the first farrier visit I've been present for with Harry, so I was a bit anxious. He reared twice, tiny rears mind you, because Sam was just holding his foot up while talking to us and not really paying attention to him. I guess he's just impatient because after she stopped answering our questions about hooves he was just fine.
Nina.
What a beast. I never realized how feisty she is until today.
Now, the reason why I thought Brie's scenario was funny is because Nina is the exact opposite. She's the lazy little horse in the arena that you have to keep on her to keep moving, but she goes BALLISTIC when you try to trim her hooves.
Don't get me wrong, this is NOT GOOD.
She was absolutely terrible. Today was pretty much the worst nightmare of all farriers.
Since the last time a farrier was out, my brother has been working with her to keep her front feet out for longer. We used to think it was just a balance issue. Today proved that theory wrong, but I'll get to that. Normally, for the longest time now, I stretch Brie's front legs out before I go to lunge her. I do this both simply for the purpose of stretching and to free any pinched skin under the girth. My brother never did this with Nina, so I figured that it would help in those two ways and helping her get used to having her legs stretched in front of her mid-air.
Well, that did help. She was still nervous as all heck, shaking like a leaf. At that point, while Sam was doing the front hooves, I still believed it was a balance issue because of how much her muscles were twitching. The point is that she managed to get her front hooves done. Okay, part one accomplished. Sam now moved on the the back legs.
Horrible. She kicked Sam against the stall a handful of times. Finally, when Sam got a hold of Nina's leg, she tried to stretch it out in front to put it on the hoof stand. She had it there no more than a minute before Nina pulled away and pulled the stand with her. Understandably, she freaked. She jumped to try to get away from it but it only got caught under and between her back legs. TOTAL freak out, she reared, flipped around in the cross-ties and whipped the stand into the stall across from Brie.
So that was unacceptable, but we gave her a moment to calm down. Not happening. After that point, Nina was done. After kicking Sam away a couple more times and getting the stand stuck between her back legs again, after a stint with both of her ears and her nose being twitched, she was still trying to kick Sam away. It's now obvious that either A) She's being a brat or B) something happened that's completely busted down her trust.
Now, it's actually pretty hard for me to reach a conclusion here. When Nina was a baby, she had a trimming incident with Andre and he had to put her on the ground to trim her and her leg swelled up. That could be the cause for lack of trust. But then almost a hundred trimmings later and this having never happened again, no other bad incident, she's still going at it. This could be her being a brat.
What I've come to is that we need to rebuild this relationship with her with discipline. Up until now, we've all looked on her being the baby, the cute little baby Nina that we bought 3 years ago, the little baby Nina who could do nothing wrong. We never really disciplined her and just hung on her and let her hang on us. This has resulted in a lack of respect on her end. She needs to be able to trust that we won't let anything harm her and we need to stop treating her like an oversize dog (because chances are you won't even let your dog get away with bossing you around).
Now I just need to get this through to the rest of my family. Showing isn't everything. You can go in and lose a few shows and it's not devastatingly horrid. Manners and respect for humans is everything. You can't go into a farrier or vet session with no respect and no discipline because you can lose a life.
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