The horses enjoy cool days. The mare especially likes afternoons that are not blazing under the Texas sun. She was prancing around yesterday for no known reason. Correction. She was prancing around heading over to the stallion pen when Doc is and then stands there for hours on end.
Carter, the horse in the above photo, is like that too but is much more playful. My husband and I went for our regular Sunday walk after church yesterday. I took a lead rope with us so that we might take Carter out to the pond and then photograph him running across the pasture. We took this photo instead.
We have a lot of work to do with our horses. We both need to be riding every single day and getting these horses broke of their bad habits. The stallion has his own issues simply due to his gender. He’s a good horse though overall. Carter is older now, more mature, but still spooks easily. Arabians are like that. For the most part, he is easy to handle and only needs consistent daily work.
On our Sunday ride, we took Doc and Carter to the north pasture on the other side. There is a gate there that I had opened earlier and it was interesting to see how Carter crossed it. He knew there was always a gate there and when we walked passed, he began walking sideways as if to walk around something that wasn’t there. Keeping him forward moving and focuses we took the trail along the fence toward the forest. At the entrance of the forest is where all went wrong. Doc decided he was not moving anymore. He was finished; there was nothing there for him. Carter typically is not a leader horse, however I am discovering that is changing. I lead but he was very jumpy and nervous.
I did some confidence exercises with him before heading down the trail, meanwhile my SIL was struggling to get Doc to focus. For safety, we got off and walked our horses along the trail and mounted once at the clearing.
We believe in ending things on a good note. It is important the a horse trusts you and that he not dread a ride due to previous bad experience. We concluded after some time there and rode back with no event. In fact, the ride back to that gate was quite nice even though goblins lurked in the woods and Carter was a bit on edge. He did fine though. Doc did well on the way back and most horses do when they are as gate and buddy sour as ours are. It wasn’t one of our better days, but there are many more ahead and I think Doc will do just fine on upcoming rides.
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