Dolly update - cont'd

I guess I’ll keep this blog going for a bit longer yet – mostly because I have a bit of new material to write about!

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I’ve also discovered that while 90% of the time, Dolly is a fun little horse to ride, she has that last 10% that is a spoiled little kid hopped up on sugar that wants more toys and is PISSED OFF when she doesn’t get what she wants. She has had a couple of meltdowns on me – head tossing, little leaps, sidepassing, etc. She starts doing this as we get closer to the barn at the end of a bit longer (than normal) ride. (To this point, all of my rides have just been at the walk with a small bit of trotting.) She will get herself all worked up and sweaty but still walks on without speeding up.

The first two times that it happened, I have just ignored the behaviour and gently pushed her forward. I figure it is harder to act up while moving forward. I have also made sure to stay off her mouth while she is acting up. She hasn’t reared, but her front feet get a little light and I imagine that a sharp pull on the mouth at the wrong time could just aggravate the behaviour.

At first we couldn’t decide if her behaviour was attitude, fatigue, pain, or all three. She was completely out of shape (ie – not ridden regularly for at least 18 months, if not more) when I got her. I have been slowly increasing her work over the past two months. I feel pretty confident that we haven’t pushed too hard to fast. We are leaning towards attitude (with a capital “A”) and a little bit of barn/buddy sourness going on.

I was wondering if Dolly was just too much horse for me. I’ve been missing Rusty’s steadfast behaviour a bit, but I also know that I was a bit bored riding him. I find myself at a bit of a crossroads with my riding/horsemanship and I think Dolly is the horse that could push me forward quite a bit. Part of me is terrified to take that step forward, but the other part of me sure wants to give it a try.

I needed a bit of a strategy to figure out the best way to get through these attitude issues. The one month of riding that the other girl did for me didn’t really accomplish much, except for increasing Dolly’s fitness a bit. She is used to training hunters and Dolly’s quirks and her style of riding didn’t really mesh. Luckily, Endurance Lady offered to help me out when she had time, so knowing that I had that option helped me out a bit.

We have a new trainer/coach coming to our barn - he lives in Quebec and is now coming down once a month to work with a few horses/riders. I watched a couple of sessions he did with other horses over the summer and he seemed to know what he was doing. I thought working with him might help me, but I wasn’t sure. After another one of Dolly’s meltdowns last week, I bit the bullet and decided to try working with him. He does a lot of round pen work to establish respect and trust. I had sort of figured that was what Dolly and I were missing.

Turns out I was right – she isn’t a bossy, dominant or mean mare, but she doesn’t trust easily. We worked on leading for a bit and then moved to the round pen. We worked her (with breaks of course) for about 45 minutes at the walk/trot and she spent most of that time evading the trainer in various ways. Towards the end of the session, she did start to focus and start to get the hang of things. His techniques seem similar to most of the big trainers – lunging for respect, etc. but he has a nice quiet way of working with the horses. I have seen the progress he has made with another gelding at the barn, so I’m hopeful that he can help me get through to Dolly.

I had a good refresher on body language (both human and horse!) and I have a bunch of stuff to work on over the next month. I’ll try and elaborate more after the next lesson, if I can. I’m looking forward to getting out to the barn as much as I can this month and seeing how much progress we can make.