So today I rode Skye again for the first time since the first week of June. I was always alone at the Greenway pasture, and she was giving me so much trouble on the ground that getting the saddle on her and getting on her back didn't seem like a good idea. I realized as I was tacking her up today that I really had been avoiding it, but probably for good reason.
She has been a different horse since she has been moved to the new barn. She is handled twice a day by different people for feeding, so not only is she getting handled and checked on a lot, she also has come to associate coming in with getting fed. And, sad as she may be about it, she is not with the big lead gelding she was so attached to in the Greenway pasture. She has been sweet to me, walking up to me when I go to get her, and she hasn't once balked on the way in.
She has gotten a little pushy and harder to back up, so I have been backing her up when she invades my space. She is so smart she figures out she has gone too far right away, and then pretends she can't imagine who must have been crowding me in such an impolite way. She has been great in the round pen on the long lead line, but she still needs some practice listening to me.
That was pretty evident today. Though she has gone so far to pull down a hitching post at the sight of the saddle in the past 6 weeks, today she acted like an old cowboy horse when I put the saddle on her back. I let her had a good long look and sniff at the saddle and the pads, then put them on her, and she actually looked bored! She didn't like me messing with the pads a lot on her right side, and remembering that Clinton Anderson says you have two horses- one on the right side and one on the left side- I took off the pad and put it on the right side. She liked that a lot less, but she was still fine. As usual, she looked pretty sheepish when I asked her how silly it felt to be a 1200 pound animal afraid of a soft little blankie. She was no problem when I tightened the girth, and took the bridle like a champ.
She stood still when I got on, then walked around one full time around the little ring, but already started break into a trot and toss her head around. I managed to bring her down and made her stop, then asked her to go again. Because of how she tossed her head and hollowed her back, I wonder again if the saddle is the problem. It's a predicament, because if she is just being a butthead, her behavior has to be addressed - I would need to ride her longer, changing direction and circling and doing figure eights to keep her at a walk, and then maybe at a slow trot. But if it is the saddle bugging her, by continuing to ride her I'd be teaching her that being ridden is a painful business. I only ended up riding about 10 minutes, but now it has been done!
So I'm back to the horse I started with when I bought her in March. Sweet on the ground but no pushover, and way too jumpy under saddle. I know a lot more now, and have people around me so I'm not edgy about being alone. My next step is to try to see if it's the saddle by trying others on her and seeing how she does. This Big Pretty Something I bought has a long way to go.
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