sale horse - do we want her?

Hi all. That "barrel" mare my farrier owns is here. Although she
actually didn't run barrels - he had her confused with some other
horse. He wants me to get her sold for him and/or keep her myself.
He'd prefer that since he knows and believes in my program, but he
wants money for her, of course, and not only do I not have any, I can't
justify buying another horse if I did have some. I don't think.

Well, maybe. :-)

So, I really like her. She is very interesting - quiet and sweet but
ramps up quicky. Doesn't wig out but definitely can get upset.
Defensive about her face: deworming, rein pressure, bridling a tiny
bit. Two speeds under saddle: fast and faster. Almost no steering at
anything other than a walk, which is, you know, just not safe. heh
heh, duh.

So we've worked her several times already. Bridling is good now,
deworming is good after a few minutes of work, giving to the bit is
getting better. She will now relax and just walk, and she seems so
happy to have discovered that it's OK to do that here. Steering at all
speeds is much much MUCH better. She is safe as far as not bucking,
not rearing, not spooking, and she won't go so far as to crash herself
into a wall although her first few times loping circles she did come
pretty close to crashing into me as I was observing. She's a sensitive
mare but she was deliberately shouldering over to me at speed, wanting
to be near me as I'm her main handler, I suppose, or maybe just wanting
to hurt me, I'm not sure which :-) so I finally helped her rider by
giving her a good whallop with a spare cinch to the shoulder when she
got too close to me (this is after already being told by body, seat,
leg and rein not to run over Cindi) and that REALLY seemed to help
clear up that little misunderstanding she was having right away.

I'm not fond of being this rough but this was pretty evident - she
wasn't shouldering over and attempting to smash any other parts of the
arena or a barrel or a cone or a gate or wall - just me. I do feel she
was doing it mostly out of anxiety - somebody really has this girl
worked up - combined with not being super fit and turning left being
her worse direction, but it's dangerous enough that I didn't want to
just fluff-bunny her out of it. So I basically said no matter how
anxious and how unbalanced you feel, you cannot run people over,
period. It was kind of weird as I certainly have told horses that when
working them in hand but I've never told it to a horse being ridden.

Anyway after that, coupled with lots and lots of riding on the buckle,
she is really turning into a great horse. What we've done with her
speed issue is to just let whatever happens happen for now - we want to
do some trotting to get her in shape but she always lopes instead of
trots, so we just let her lope around a bit and then gradually put her
on a smaller circle until she slows down, and then immediately lining
her back out and relaxing and patting her... Eventually she will need
to learn the difference between being asked to trot and being asked to
lope, but for now we don't want to pull her up or reprimand her since
she's such a stress case already. She seems to already have the
attitude of "oh CRAP, I forgot and started LOPING again, and now my
rider is going to KILL me." So she's realizing that's not going to be
the case here and she's coming along in the relaxation department quite
nicely. Today she happily walked on the buckle for 45 minutes without
offering to speed up and then did some jogging with only a tiny tiny
bit of shouldering over toward the person-on-the-ground (me.)

This is all in the arena. Maybe she did run barrels after all and she
has that arena anxiety... Outside the arena she is an angel. Never
tries to eat grass, goes where pointed, will go alone or in a group,
the group can lope off and leave her behind or she can lope off and
leave them with no issues whatsoever, not a single spook.

So I see a lot of potential in her. And I have several students now
who are ready to move up from the horses that they have been riding,
the ones we know will NEVER go faster than begged and will certainly
never offer anything other than a whoa... ;-) Two of my students have
ridden her and they both liked her a lot although my working student
was in tears the second time she rode her. She is having a very big
problem with being able to let go of old habits - for a tense too-fast
horse she pulls on the reins trying to "soften" them and get them to
lower their heads, and she gets really tense in her body, and of course
the horse does not slow down or relax at all, and she doesn't realize
she's causing it and instead blames the horse. I really feel for her
because she had a decade of lessons with somebody who's relatively
accomplished in the eventing and dressage world and who should
therefore have half a clue, one would hope, yet this poor girl is
totally lacking a foundation. It's like her old trainer just put her on
a finished horse who would never get upset and who tolerates being put
into a frame... although I know that's not true because she was
schooling greenies there as well as riding her horse and sale horses.

So anyway I had to really talk her thru relaxing, letting go,
breathing, not worrying about where the mare's head is, not picking at
her about things she flat out doesn't know how to do yet and doesn't
care to do anyway when she's tense... Once she was able to do some of
that the mare went a lot better for her. But the problem is her sister
who's only been riding for a year can ride this mare wonderfully...
because she doesn't have any old habits and just does what she's
learned from me. And the girls have a lot of competition and strife
between them. Their mom tells me they fight all the time, and in a
mean way, not a playful way. I'm an only child so I don't know much
about sibling fighting but some of the stuff their mom has told me has
turned my stomach. I really like these girls (and there is another
sister also who just started lessons) and it makes me so sad to think
about them being mean to each other.

Anyway, I'm getting off my point, which is that I think I want this
mare. I have enough horses who will only walk no matter what unless
all the moons of Saturn are in alignment and they got up on the right
side of the corral that day. ;-)

I'm enjoying everybody else's posts about their horses (or whatever
else comes up.) More, more! :-)

Oh, my super secret webpage with pics of the mare is here:
http://www.allisonacres.org/nala.html
Ignore the price as she's not officially for sale since maybe she's
already sold, to me!

.

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