Read part 1 of A Speed-Challenged Horse here. Usually, a trainer would work with Chocolate in a round pen to get her moving, because the horse doesn’t have the option of running away. I don’t have direct access to a round pen daily, so my trainer, Cara, instructs me to start working with Chocolate in […]
I have been in the process of re-training my mare Chocolate for close to two years now. It has been a long road, waning in and out of consistency. BUT, one of the largest challenges I have had to deal with is Chocolate’s laziness. There are two different kinds of laziness: the “Whatever, I’d rather […]
One of my horse’s larger problems is that she is allergic to pain. She basically hates anything that hurts, bites, stings, or doesn’t feel good. Deworming falls into those catergories. Some horses don’t put up a fuss at all about deworming; I don’t think it’s uncommon, though, for a horse to hate deworming. For those […]
When I first bought Chocolate, my second horse, I can’t really remember what I thought of her. I should have known that she was not the perfect horse. When I rode her for the first time, I was not super impressed with her actual skill, but I was impressed with how calm she was all […]
So finally the day came when the vet was going to come out and float the horse’s teeth. I was pretty worried that it wouldn’t go so well. I shouldn’t have; it all went fine. I underestimated the power of sedation. Dr. Gillis, of AMC, wanted to start with Barbie because her teeth were worse. […]
I strongly believe that building a relationship with your horse is the key to understanding horses. Horses always look for leaders. Some horses are much more dominant towards people, but that is mostly because they find people to be incapable of taking care of them. A strong leader is what makes horses feel comfortable and […]
As I have come to know my horses better, I have been realizing that everything I learned about riding lessons hasn’t really stuck with me. I was wondering if it was all for naught, but then I recognized that I did learn lots about riding, but only riding. I have taken riding lessons for a […]
Normally, we ride our pony Barbie Doll bareback, but all of a sudden, she started doing this weird thing where she would crow-hop a little when we asked her to stop. I was worried about falling off. I started saddling her up more, and then smacking her whenever this happened, but it didn’t seem to […]
I have a friend that adopted a horse that had some problems. The horse, General, was previously used as an endurance horse, or a competition horse, that is run for long distances. Every time my friend would get on this horse, as soon as she was on, the horse would begin trotting and not slow […]
When we first got both horses, they each had little quirks that really needed to be trained out. None were serious, but were bothersome and really annoying. Right after buying Barbie Doll, we realized that we did not own a mounting block. We ride Barbie bareback most of the time, so we did not have […]
