My horses bad habits & other misc. stuff

I’ll start with Bo because he is so simple and easy.  His worst bad boy behavior is head tossing.  I fixed that simply by using a running martingale.  Hoping to work through that particular problem and get him through it in the next few rides.  Bo is smart enough to know when I have it on, or don’t.  He doesn’t even try to toss his head when it’s on.  This will take some schooling and patience.  I think we’ve progressed far enough this year with ride starts that I feel safe on him and don’t feel like he’s going to try to do anything unpredictable or bad.

The second thing with Bo that I would change if I could is to get him to stop playing with *everything*.  He’s not mean or malicious, but at times can certainly be destructive.  Mostly he just creates more work for his humans.  Stuff like playing with the stall mats, rearranging water troughs and throwing buckets around.  He gives new meaning to the term “horse proof”.  I think that now my property is “Bo proof”, though there are currently two stall mats outside in the paddock that belong inside two of the horse stalls.

As far as other bad habits especially riding ones, I can’t really think of any.  Bo stands and even moves over to anything I stand on while I mount.  He respects my space and is not a dominate horse so gets along with everybody.  He does everything right during competition like eating and drinking making it real easy to ride him on rides of any distance.  No worries!

Now for Chief.  This is a bit harder because a lot of what I consider to be things that I don’t like with him….are also some of the same reasons why I love him so.  His biggest flaw is that he simply loves to go.  I really wouldn’t want to change that.  Though toning it down a little would be okay, at times.  I don’t have any trouble stopping him, or rating him (though it does take effort on my part), and if I do get off he leads behind me without stepping on me.  Even when he’s fully amped up and wired, he knows the drill and doesn’t get out of control.  It’s all in his head, anyway.  I’m always managing his brain.  Chief wouldn’t be the horse he is if he didn’t have that overly exuberant enthusiastic attitude.

Rocky was always easy too.  He loved to go and his biggest bad habit was spooking (aka “levitating”) when he was held back.  Let him go faster and he feared nothing!  I trusted him enough to let a junior rider do 1,000 miles with him and he always took care of her.  Rocky’s most annoying thing is his personality.  He can be the sweetest horse and he can also be the biggest butthead if he wants.  No amount of patience will change that, if he’s being that way it’s better to come back later, for all concerned.  Fortunately he’s the only horse I’ve ever had a love/hate relationship with like that.

So I guess my list of things that are bad behaviors or that I’d like to change with my horses is relatively small.  I’ve got a much bigger list of all of the things that they do right. They tie well, trailer load well, haul well, eat and drink well while traveling or competing.  All of them are easy to handle – feet, shots, worming, clipping, whatever.  My vets always compliment them and say things like they wished all of the horses they had to work on were as good. I don’t have to “catch” my guys even if they are loose in a big area.  They all get along – nobody kicks or bites though at first Rocky did try to boss Bo around and chase him away from his food.  He’s not doing that anymore now, and it didn’t really hurt anything because it just got them both moving around more.

Tigger's 2009 Virginia City 100 Silver Bracelet!

So this year I’ll keep working on these things  – getting Bo weaned off of needing to use a martingale and continuing to work with Chief to get him to not get so amped up and excited.

Hey look what I got in the mail yesterday – Tigger’s silver bracelet from the Virginia City 100! Cool, huh? I chose a bracelet this time, since I already have a VC 100 buckle.

I wrote a rather long ride report about the VC 100.  In case you missed it, here it is.  Be sure to check out the post about the ghost in the cemetery.

My husband took one look at my new shiny trinket and simply says “don’t even tell me what that cost!”.  Smart man!  lol

I hope that all of Dave’s other horses stay sound this coming year so that maybe I can sneak in a ride once in awhile on little Tig – he’s a fun horse to ride. I sure like him a lot.  Dave’s done a good job getting the buck out of him.  Tig doesn’t stand very well when you mount (well, except for on the later parts of a 100, hahaha), but I suppose Dave knows if Tigger were to turn out to be perfect that I’d want him back!  Actually, they are a pretty good match and I hope they’ll get to do many more miles together.