Retraining The 'Trained' Horse...Oy Vey...

As I reported in my last posting, I just got in from riding my mare and some days, I'm ready to pull my almost-blonde-out-of-a-bottle-hair out!!

Since there have been quite a bit of thunderstorms, I don't ride much. I'm totally afraid of riding in mud. I'll take riding in snow over mud any day. I've had horses slip right out from under me in mud and one even bowed a tendon, so no mud-riding for me.

So, this makes it hard for me to keep a horse going. When I miss days sometimes and then get back on, the first 15 minutes can be really, really interesting before we can get down to business. My mare makes me work for every little bit, which is good in a way but it does get old after a while.

Now my mare is broke to the hilt and someone in the distant past did a helluva job training her but I bought her from some people who were into 'N'atural 'H'orse Training and my mare got the upper hand rather quickly...and she kept the upper hand. Wouldn't relinquish it one bit!!

Then I came along. The take-no-prisoners cowgirl from the old school... My mare had been 'told' that she and the humans were on a level playing field and that us humans would try to 'understand' her and her feelings. So, I got an unmitigated brat (who is also an Appy, read other posts about Appys and their characteristics). She basically took their niceness as being weak (which in a way, it is weak) and steamrolled right over them. That's how I ended up with her.

I took a lookie at her papers and 'saw' a good horse who needed straightening out. Due to circumstances, I didn't get to do much with her till recently.

But this morning's ride...I'm telling ya...I haven't ridden since last week and she just wasn't into listening to me. Saw the frickin' barn cat after a squeaker (a type of rodent, bigger than a mouse) that she has seen every single day since we moved here and just could NOT get with the program! In my mind, I was tallying up how much my emergency room bill was going to be.

She went right back into turning on the forehand and throwing her haunches out, bowing up her neck at the third vertebrae (not a good idea even though a lot of modern day dressage riders do it. Called something like Rollkur, not sure, would have to look it up but it's basically dangerous for a horse), asking with my legs was going nowhere, diving into turns. That sort of stuff. This is what she reverts to when not ridden regularly.

So, I've had thoughts recently of starting her all over again. Just like she was an unbroke horse. I've done this on several horses and overall, it worked out well. She needs more forward instead of dwelling on her forehand so much. She has been 'let' go on her forehand so much and it's so much easier for her to do it wrong that she reverts to this. I've been around horses long enough to recognize she's been trained badly, but recently, not the original training. She knows right from wrong but it's easier to do the wrong thing and get away with it, instead of the right thing.

(Sorry about this post being strange. I was typing along and all of a sudden, blogger posted my unfinished post and now I'm editing it...I'm hoping this works well) I better post this and then post again because I'm not sure what happened... :-)