Pedicure Day

Today Skye had her hooves trimmed. Her herd had rotated pastures to the one situated near the gravel road entrance, and as I pulled in I saw her standing at the gate with the other horses. She was in front of course, as she is always the alpha. The other horses are beautiful (as horses are, to me, always beautiful), but even from a distance, she stood out to me as having a certain quality. I have so many doubts about this horse, and whether I should continue to try to get her where she needs to be, or whether I should sell her to someone who has the experience to bring out her potential. Yet sometimes when I look at her, she seems like the only horse for me. Maybe because she is so hard to get, so hard to win over completely. Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

I led her in to where her food was waiting in her stall, but she has started this new bad habit of turning in toward me, so she is curved like a crescent moon. Unacceptable. I backed her up, and she resisted, so I insisted and backed her some more. She seemed to get it and stopped doing it, but I worry that when other people, particularly the kids who help, bring her in to eat, they will let her get away with it. But I still think it’s better for her to be handled a lot, so I’ll just have to keep teaching her so at least she won’t do it with me.

But once again she was a good girl while she got her hooves trimmed. She was practically perfect last time, but she resisted once or twice today. In her defense, she wasn’t in a great position on her other three feet at one point, but overall she was still a good girl. When I led her back to the stall for a minute to pay the farrier, she did the crescent moon thing again, which sealed the deal about lunging her in the round pen - she definitely needed it. So I paid, then went back to get her.

She was a pretty good girl in the pen, but didn’t want to trot, so I really had to swing the end of the lead rope to her. But once she got going, it was just a few circuits in that she “gave me her ear,” then she stopped as soon as I asked and turned to go the other direction pretty smoothly.  She seemed a little resistant so I kept at it until she licked her lips and really had her eye on me. Then I brought her in for a rest. I rubbed her on the forehead and stood beside her breathing deeply for a minute. Then I did a couple more circuits in each direction and took her back out to her new pasture. 

Then, on the way out, I saw her from the van, so I rolled down the window and called to her.  It took a couple of calls to get her to look up, but when she did, she perked her ears up and gave me a sign of recognition. It feels like progress.