When a Good Horse is "Bad"

                                                by Laura Crum

            I brag all the time here about my steady little trail horse, Sunny, and how reliable he is. And this is quite true. But Sunny is only human-- uhmm, I guess that would be equine. He has good days and bad days, as we all do. I think you horse people will understand that a chilly mid-winter day after two weeks off is likely to result in a bad day, yes?

            Last week Sunny had a couple of “bad” days. I couldn’t really blame him. And his bad is quite manageable. But I thought it might be interesting to discuss how various folks deal with this sort of thing. So here’s the story.

            My oldest horse, Gunner, got cast a week before Xmas, and needed a lot of attention. And all the next week it stormed like crazy. So no horses got ridden for almost two weeks. Right around New Year’s we started riding again, mostly little rides in our riding ring, as it was muddy and slick almost everywhere. Quite slick. As I was leading Sunny up to the riding ring one day, I slipped and fell down right in front of him. Predictably Sunny threw up his head and trotted off to the nearest clump of grass. But…as I sat there on the ground, unharmed, but a bit chagrined, watching him leave, Sunny (once he was a good twenty feet away) kicked both hind feet out in my general direction.

            Sunny had no intention of kicking me. There must have been at least twelve-fifteen feet between his hooves and my body. It was a gesture of defiance, a thumbing of his nose at me. I can read Sunny perfectly, and I knew what he was saying.

            You see, I handle Sunny a bit differently than my other horses, and there is a reason for this. Sunny is a horse who is always wondering if he can dominate his human. I’m not sure how he got like this—I do know he showed this behavior with his previous owners. Unlike every other horse on my place, Sunny will offer to kick, bite, step on my foot, push through me on the leadrope…etc. Or at least he would do these things when I first got him. None of my other horses would ever consider, under any circumstances, making an aggressive gesture at a human. But Sunny will. Thus, I handle him differently.

            Sunny is not a dangerous horse. I do not believe he has any intention of hurting anyone. He just wants to see if he can be the boss. And if his human does not firmly reprimand him and let him know that he will NOT be the boss, his behavior escalates.

            When I bought Sunny, the first time I went out to catch him he turned his butt to me and made a (quite token) kicking gesture in my direction. I stepped to one side, walloped him as hard as I could with the leadrope, and drove him around his pen until he faced me and stood still to be caught. It took a couple of repeats, but after that Sunny politely faced me to be caught. For many years now, in fact, he meets me at the gate. But there were many other areas in which Sunny needed a similar correction.

            I’ve blogged about this before, so won’t go on about it further. Suffice it to say that though Sunny’s behavior is polite and respectful these days, and he often nuzzles me quite fondly, I know perfectly well that he’s always aware of whether I am assuming the correct dominant role. And I am careful to do so. And we do fine.

            Now I could have fallen down while leading any of my other horses, and though they might have spooked and run away, NONE of them would have kicked in my general direction. This was Sunny saying to me, “Ha. You just put yourself in a one-down, vulnerable position. Now I can dominate.”

            And sure enough, when I went to catch him he kept swinging his butt toward me, which he hasn’t done in years. Sunny doesn’t miss a trick.

            So I caught him and walloped him a little, and he made mouthing motions and OK then. I climbed aboard and we had a nice ride. And the next day I decided to go ride on the beach.

            It was a gray, unsettled day and a storm was blowing in, but we had a favorable low tide at the right time, and it was a day that I COULD do it schedule-wise, and my son wanted to go, so off we went. (I’ll bet you can guess where this is going.) When we got there the horses were very alert and looky (for them), but they are reliable horses and we headed out confidently. Here’s what it looked like on the beach. Pretty stormy.

                      We were bundled up and the horses were just plain up.

           

                     My son and Henry and a big, empty beach. Ours were the only footprints.

            My son’s horse has a very smooth trot (you can sit his long trot with ease) and a rough lope, so my kid likes to trot. He’ll trot for miles. Henry can trot as fast as most horses lope and Henry infinitely prefers to trot rather than lope. So my kid and his horse love to long trot down the beach. Sunny has an equally rough trot and lope—though neither are really terrible, just a little rough. So I don’t much care whether we trot or lope. Anyway, we let our fresh horses trot along. They blew and snorted and looked at stuff, but overall they behaved themselves. We rode for an hour or so, alternating walking and trotting and a little loping. Then we turned around to ride back.

            Sunny has always had an issue with this. I don’t know if his previous owners walked him down the beach and then turned him around and galloped back or what. But on every beach ride, when we turn around to go back, I can feel Sunny get “up”. On a good day, its just a feeling in his body, which resolves in a long swinging walk, what my son and I call his “power walk.” But on a less than good day, it tends to result in a bunch of little hoppy bucks, as Sunny indicates he’d like to bolt now.

            I’ve dealt with this in various ways. Mostly I ignore it and just bump lightly him with the bit to remind him he’s under control. Sometimes, once he’s under control, I let him trot or lope until he’s happy to walk. Occasionally I make him march through the deep sand (this is very effective). Once in awhile, when he’s particularly obnoxious, I reprimand him a little. This day Sunny was very persistent with his hopping and scooting. But hey, it was cold, he hadn’t been ridden much lately, and we’d had a little argument the day before.

            My son thought it was hilarious. He kept his distance, aware of wanting to be away from Sunny’s feet as the horse kicked up, but he was laughing the whole time. “Let’s trot, and see if he bucks,” he suggested with a grin.

            “Ok,” I said, “but let’s hope he doesn’t buck me off.”

            In truth, I don’t think Sunny can/will buck hard enough to buck me off. And the long trot is a good gait for a horse that wants to buck. So off we went down the beach, with Sunny mostly trotting, but throwing in a little hop/skip every once in awhile. My son was having blast. Me, well, it was annoying but not threatening. I just put up with it.

            To tell you the truth, my main emotion was gratitude. I am so grateful to own/ride a horse whose bad days are so easy for me to deal with. I seriously don’t want to get hurt at this point in my life—it’s my number one priority when I interact with the horses. I don’t want to ride any horse that might freak out and panic, or genuinely try to get me off. Not interested in that at all. But Sunny’s little shenanigans are pretty benign. He remains level-headed and responsive to my cues even while he farts around.

            Eventually Sunny got tired enough to line out, and both horses were willing/happy to walk. We finished the ride relaxed, the horses having had just the right amount of exercise—people, too. So even though my horse was “bad,” we had a good day.

            And this is my question. How do you other horse people deal with a good horse who is being “bad?” I’d love to get your insights.

            Also, a big thank you to all of you who made our “free” promotion of my mystery novel, Slickrock, last week such a huge success. If any of you have time to post a review of the book on Amazon or Goodreads, I’d be very grateful. Thank you!

            

Winter: It's Not My Thing, Really

by Natalie Keller Reinert

I'm having trouble with this whole wintertime thing, guys.

Natalie's First Chapter Book!

Here's the thing: I'm from Florida. Technically I was born in Maryland, and I lived there long enough to do things like learn to tie my own Punky Brewster hi-tops and read chapter books (the first being Emily's Runaway Imagination by Beverly Cleary, chosen for the horse on the cover) and write my name in an uneven cursive. 

But by the time I had read everything else Beverly Cleary had ever written, and Punky Brewster had gone off to juvie or whatever happened to her, and... well my cursive was still fairly uneven I guess.... I had been shipped off to Florida, and I was adjusting to the markedly different weather.

And I adjusted... very well. In fact, you could argue that I've never been so well-adjusted to anything in my environment as I have been to the weather in Florida. I once stood outside of a Magic Kingdom merchandise location in the full July sun wearing a long-sleeved black blouse, black slacks, and my hair loose around my shoulders. A sweating couple, faces flush with sunburn, asked me somewhat incredulously if I wasn't hot. I glanced up at the midday sun, shrugged, and said, "It's warm, I guess."

And a few jaunts back to the Northeast -- once when I was a teenager, once when I was an adult -- were short-lived and involved a lot of grousing about the weather, and the short days, and the weather, and the weather.

But I moved to New York City in 2010 and the weather... you guys, it's just awful.

Take today, for example. Today, it rained. Except when it was sleeting, and for a few deceptively promising moments when it was almost-snowing, it rained. It was thirty-five degrees. You guys. What is this even.

Working with horses when it's cold out is possibly my least favorite thing to do. In Florida, I had a loose guideline for cold weather: if it's below 55 degrees, leave the horse alone. I would be too miserable to function properly, and the horse would be too happy to deal with in my defective state. Forget it. 

In 2010, galloping racehorses at Aqueduct, I had already resigned myself to losing the feeling in my toes before I got to the first quarter pole. And that was in November. I couldn't put on enough layers to stay warm: bulk up with more than two sweaters, and I was too constrained to safely ride the horse. My ears I considered already lost to the icy winds off Jamaica Bay after just one mount. It was a bad scene, and I couldn't stick with it. I stayed home the rest of the winter and wrote the rest of The Head and Not The Heart instead.

Last winter I barely went outside. Forget it. I wrote two new books (both of which await rewrites) and hovered over my radiator.

But this year, I realized, I had to suck it up. I had to deal with winter head-on, face-first. I couldn't waste half a year -- and that's the unfortunate part about New York City, it's winter for half a year -- hiding under my down comforter. I had to do grown-up things, like keep my job, and accept reality, blah blah blah... some people actually do live in cold climates, and survive.

Like, on purpose.

There was some spending to be done. A whole new wardrobe had to be acquired. Warm riding boots reacquainted me with my toes and made posting trot less of a dangerous stab in the dark. Riding mittens from SSG are an acquired taste if you, like me, enjoy riding one-handed, but they're worth the trouble. And beneath the layers and layers, Heattech everything. Heattech leggings. Heattech socks. Heattech shirt. When in doubt, throw technology at it. 

And I give myself pep talks. Like, hey Natalie, when you were in high school you actually survived blizzards and worked twelve hour days at farms without any heat and then went riding. That's always cheering. Proof that I've lived through way, way worse.

And the result? I can ride in the cold, so far, without actually bursting into tears. I can make myself get out of bed in the morning. My body is still whispering Hey... Natalie... now would be a great time to curl up under your comforter and write all day and never leave the apartment... but I'm resisting. So far. 

But I still question my sanity when I look at the weather forecast! So if anyone has any suggestions on staying warm, in or out of the saddle, this Florida girl is all ears... if she can regain the feeling in them, of course.

Come on a Winter Ride

by Laura Crum

I really love looking at everybody’s trail ride photos. All those ear pictures! All the different places, some so unlike where I live. It may be my favorite part of reading horse blogs. Every time I see ear photos I feel as if I’m going on a ride with the blogger. So here’s a winter ride for you guys. A short pleasant ride along my local trails here in the hills by California’s Monterey Bay. My regular “go to” ride. Nothing too spectacular, nothing too difficult. Come with Sunny and me through the redwood forest, across the creek, and up to the top of the hill to see the view. The whole ride takes a little less than two hours. (I am no endurance rider!) Pretty much the entire thing takes place on singletrack dirt trail that is seldom used. We rarely see other riders and hikers—maybe one ride out of half a dozen we meet someone. Its pretty solitary. Very barefoot friendly (Sunny is barefoot). So here we go.

Off through the redwood forest. Its pretty dark down here under the big trees. The temp is in the 60’s, so its not too chilly. I’m wearing a light vest and I’m comfortable. Sunny is wearing his winter coat—as you can see by his fuzzy ears. You can also see lots of downed limbs from a recent winter wind storm.

Now we are going down to the creek. Passing between two big redwoods—you can see the creek in the bottom of the gully (its pretty low right now, due to a dry winter) and the trail going up the other side.

Headed uphill through the forest. Light ahead. Some of my photos are a little blurry—sorry. I have not yet mastered taking sharp “ear photos” from a moving horse, and all of these were taken as we marched down the trail.

Still going uphill. Its getting misty as we get closer to the ocean. Right about here I saw a deer, but was not quick enough to get her photo. We see many wild animals on these rides. Deer, bobcats, coyotes, foxes. Not to mention squirrels and rabbits and all the little guys of the woods. Fortunately Sunny is not bothered by such critters, even if they emerge suddenly from the underbrush. We have the same assortment of wild animals at home, so he sees them regularly.

Getting near the top of the hill. Things are opening up. We’re almost at the place we call “the Lookout”.

Now we’re there. Its very misty today out over the ocean. Not much view to see.

But since we are here on the computer, rather than riding in real life, I can show you the view on another winter day. Here’s the same view on a clear day last January. That’s the Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz in the distance.

OK, now we’re headed home. Taking a different way back, through more open scrubby country, populated by oaks rather than redwoods. Tired of the deep shade under the big trees. This is a stretch where we often trot or lope, so I’m putting the camera away. (You'll just have to imagine us loping along--which we did--my skills are not up to making videos yet.)

Hope you enjoyed the brief winter tour of my local trails. We’ve had a mild winter and I’ve been able to ride a lot. As you can see, the trails have been dry. Around here, winter is the green grass season. The grass will be bleached gold in the late spring and summer, and brown by autumn.

I can access these trails by riding right out my front gate, so this is one of my regular rides. Its been featured in several of my novels, including "Barnstorming", due out this spring. If you read the book, you'll be able to picture the trails pretty well, after reading this post.

Its always so much fun for me to see the country that others ride through-- I thought I’d return the favor. Now we’re ready for a glass of whisky by the fire, after our pleasant winter ride.

Cheers--Laura