Houdini

I was up at the yard myself last night. I mucked out and left Wolfie eating some hay whilst I went to empty the wheelbarrow and make up his feeds. On returning I was ambling along, lost in my own little world when I looked up and Wolfie's stable door was wide open with no Wolfie in it. My heart leapt into my mouth. He hadn't passed me, I hadn't heard his feet and I definitely bolted the door as I check it every time. I grabbed his headcollar and went to run up a small track that leads behind the stables. I happened to glance in the hayshed and who was standing up the back stuffing his face with hay but Wolfie. Fortunately it was his own hay he was eating, but I'm not sure he hadn't sampled a few of the other bales. He is now in his stable with a clip on the bolt and the kick bolt over at all times.

The weather has been reasonable this last week and I've managed to get Wolfie out almost every night. He's been really fresh and full of nonsense. I lunged him the other night and he was just having a complete carry on. Bucking, taking off, leaping off all four legs. I decided to just let him burn it off. At one point he stopped dead and did the biggest buck I have ever seen in my life. He was completely vertical. One half of me was thinking I hope he never ever attempts that when he has a rider on him and the other half of me was in total awe that he had the ability to do that. It was a handstand. The boy is an acrobat.

I long reined him up the fields the other day. It was just meant to be a break from the school as he hasn't been out in ages and a little hill work. He kept taking sharp left and right turns into ditches, thick trees, bushes, streams. To be fair he caught me unawares every time and I was being pretty useless. Take your eye off him for a second and he takes his own route. Coming back down, it's fairly steep and I was intending to traverse across the field. Wolfie had other ideas and seemed to think cantering straight down the hill would be much more fun. What should have taken ten minutes to get home, then proceeded to take about three quarters of an hour as I had to keep circling him to slow him down and try and prevent him from bouncing on the spot. He then started spooking at a big clump of snowdrops (they obviously hadn't flowered the last time he was up there) . He's funny when he spooks. He acts dramatically for about a minute and then he marches straight over to whatever he's spooking at. I lunged him again tonight and he was very good. His canter transitions are becoming much more balanced. He is stiffer on his right rein and I am trying to be very concious of making sure that I do even amounts of work on both sides, including leading etc. I am going to lunge him in side reins next week and do a bit more long reining and then get back to riding. I'm hoping now the weather will remain good enough to get him back into consistent ridden work. I have a new wintec saddle (well it's new to us) and I haven't had a chance to try it out properly.

Who can't walk over tarpaulin?

Driving up to the yard today I was feeling really positive. The weather over the last three weeks has been absolutely awful. A combination of snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures. A blunt reminder that although the nights may be getting longer, it's still winter. I haven't been able to do any work with Wolfie at all as the ground has just been too hard or too slippy. Today was warmer and the sun was shining. As I drove up the driveway, Wolfie came cantering down to the gate. I grabbed his head collar and went to bring him in only to find he had lost a front shoe. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. I had been desperate to ride him. He was only shod less than three weeks ago, but the fields are in a pretty horrendous state and the mud is really deep and thick after having been frozen for so long, a few of the other horses have sprung shoes. I won't risk riding without a front shoe incase he's foot sore or the foot starts to break up. I hope the farrier can fit him in early on this week. I brought him in anyway and decided to take him into the school as the surface was soft and do a little ground work with the 'dreaded' taurpalin. Again he acted pretty dramatically although it was folded up into a very small square on the ground. I worked him in the dually halter and then brought one of his turnout rugs in and layed that out flat. He was soon walking over that no problem, although every time he passed the offending black object he would snort and leap past it. Working in the dually halter again I managed to get him walking around the taurpalin. I unfolded it bit by bit, each time asking him to walk over it. The first few times he was able to jump it. As the area became bigger he would follow me over it, but at 100 miles per hour. Eventually he was walking back and forth over it when it was spread out fully. I was very, very pleased as due to his initial reaction to the tarpaulin I thought this might have developed into a bit of an issue. Wolfie loves praise and as he had an audience he was in his element. We achieved alot today and that made up for not being able to ride.

He jumps!

Wolfie had a visit from the dentist last week. Just his routine ten month check up, but he's been shedding his caps so I was anxious to get his mouth checked and make sure everything was ok. Since November last year, I've been finding the odd tooth in his feed bucket, which initially was quite disconcerting! He got rasped to get rid of the sharp edges and the dentist said he was fine, just an uncomfortable time for him. Four of his incisors are coming through at the front, so he looks a bit gumsy! It doesn't stop him eating though. I haven't ridden in a bit for ages now, and have been riding in the dually halter. I used to alternate riding between the two, but found in the dually halter he was much softer through his back and neck and willing to stretch. With the bit in he tends to tuck his head in and concentrate on chewing on it. To be fair he hasn't done that much work with the bit in, but I will be waiting until his mouth is well and truely settled before starting again with it.

Due to the weather again, I haven't been able to do much. I have been wanting to introduce more ground work alongside riding. Yesterday the sun was out, the surface in the school was good. I worked him on the long reins in walk, I then lunged him on both reins, letting him get rid of some excess energy and worked on lots of transitions. I always lunge with two lines from the dually halter. Once he'd worked off a bit of steam he produced some really lovely trot work. It always amazes me how long his stride is for his size, he really covers the ground. I let him off the lines and let him walk around and stretch down. I put out a pole and he was walking and trotting over it. I brought out another pole and made the tiniest of crosspoles. He trotted around towards it, ears pricked, took off about one and a half strides away and absolutely ballooned over it. He must have cleared at least 3ft 6" over it. He then took off at the other side bucking and squealing. I expected him to stop, but no he came back around again in canter and launched himself over it again, he obviously thought this was great fun. I have seen him jumping the stream in the field and he always makes a lovely shape over it. I haven't really considered jumping, probably because my aims at the moment are straightness and to establish him in all three paces and jumping just seemed like something that we would do much later. I have to be very careful not to bore him with the schooling, so introducing a little pole work every now and then for a change may be beneficial. To be honest I was surprised at his ability. I don't know why though, he's a compact, powerful little horse. Maybe it was because he's not the tallest, but then didn't a 15hh horse win Badminton in 1968 ;-). I have never been that keen on show jumping and always preferred cross country, watching Wolfie yesterday I felt a bit of anticipation and excitement at the thought of jumping him.

There's somebody under the tarpaulin!

Over the last year I have become really interested in Le Trec. Until recently there was nobody locally in my area that held Le Trec events. However, that has now changed and a woman has began holding training sessions and a BHS Le Trec competition is to be held at our local RDA in January. Le Trec consists of 3 phases. Control of gaits, navigating obstacles and usually a ten mile hack with a map. We are hoping to hold a training session at the yard which I am very excited about . As it is a training session I can ride or attempt the obstacles in hand. I think it will be beneficial for Wolfie and will also give us an idea of what is involved and give me ideas for things to work on.

In preparation, I decided to get a piece of tarpaulin out and folded it up into a fairly large square and placed it in the school. I brought Wolfie into the school, let him off his rope and we walked over to the tarpaulin. We stood at the edge of it with him snorting. The wind caught the edge of the tarpaulin making it rustle. It didn't flap around, just gently moved and made a noise. Wolfie reared straight up vertically and was pawing the air in a style the black stallion would have been proud of. When he came back down he was striking out with his front feet at the tarpaulin. He then spun and took off for about three strides and then screeched to a halt and turned and came back and stood next to me. Monty Roberts has demonstrated that horses are capable of conscious thought and has shown this at his demonstrations by the horse choosing to stay with a human as opposed to his natural flight instinct. This maybe what Wolfie had decided, but it felt more like he had came back for me to go with him, but he made it clear that whatever he perceived the tarpaulin as being and whatever predators he thought lurked beneath it, it was not safe for either me or him to be near and certainly not to be stepped upon. Wolfie acted in fight and then flight mode. I don't know if he was trying to kill whatever he thought the tarpaulin was to protect me. I don't really know what reaction I was expecting, I certainly didn't think he would just accept it and walk over it, but I didn't think he would react like that. Certainly some work to be done here and back to the very basics.

Bonded

Despite my best efforts and intentions to keep Wolfie in consistent work, the weather has just been too awful to really do anything over the last few weeks. The horses had to spend 4 days in their stables as the yard was like an ice rink and there was no way of getting them to their fields. The surface in the school froze and now with such heavy rain, the ground and fields are like paddy fields.

Wolfie comes in about 3pm, and I usually get up to the yard around 4pm. When I've been arriving I've noticed that he's been really unsettled and anxious. Thinking that it was probably because he's hungry and it's nearing feed time, I have started leaving a bucket with a little chaff and carrots for him and some haylage for when he comes in. Wolfie is handled by the girl who works there, the owners of the yard and the girl with the horse next door will change his rugs or bring him in if she's up before me. I think it is good for him now to let him get used to being handled by different people. I wouldn't let anyone else work him, but leading and changing his rugs etc, I'm confident in him now that he can behave and is well mannered. Leaving the feed for him doesn't seem to be making any difference. I arrived at the yard the other day, and although he can't see my car coming from his stable, he knows the sound of the engine. I just got out of the car and was changing my boots when he started whinnying and calling. I went over to the stable and he'd got himself all wound up. As soon as I get to the door I can see him visibly relax. I normally just give him a scratch and start mucking out. He follows me around the stable for a bit and then begins munching his haylage. The other night I was changing my boots next to the car and my friend was leading him in from the field, he spotted the car and near enough dragged her off her feet to get around the side of the car and then refused to walk with her back to the stable. I don't really know what to do about that. I'm sure that he knows now, that no matter what, someone will always feed him. With him having been starved it has always been an issue. Even when he is out in the field and I'm walking around, he stands at the fence and shouts to me or gallops down the fence line following the car when I drive away. I don't know if it's because when he was so ill at the start, and was on his own, I was all he had. I became his herd and we spent a huge amount of time together, trying to care for him. He's not a cuddly horse, but likes to be scratched and likes you just to be around him. He doesn't want me there all the time, he's confident in himself and likes his routine. It just seems to be when he knows I should be there (he's an excellent time keeper) and when I am there he just thinks I should be with him.

Wolfie is fed half haylage half hay at night. I've always put his feed/ hay etc on the floor for him to eat, which he seems to prefer. I try to mix the hay and haylage so that he can have enough to keep him occupied during the night. It's a long time to be standing with nothing to do and if he's occupied the less likely he is to get up to mischief. He eats every blade of haylage and then plays with the hay, dragging it through his bed and burying it at the back, resulting in me having to throw away large amounts of hay every day, and with the price of hay at the moment I can't afford for him to be wasting it. He can't have haynets as he paws them and ends up tangled up in them. I thought about various alternatives including a hay bar, but decided he would just haul the hay out and chuck it on the floor or destroy whatever the hay was kept in (wolfie has rubber everything in his stable). My dad kindly fixed up an old hay rack and fitted it in his stable. The plan being that he could still have his haylage on the floor, but the hay would be in the rack, so it was there if he wanted it, but he couldn't waste it. He was less than impressed when I brought him in, snorting and pawing the ground at the hay rack. He didn't touch a blade of hay out of it the first night, however the next night and last night he has eaten a little. I think the cold weather has helped, making him a little hungrier as I thought his haylage protest would go on for longer. However, I may have won this hay battle, but I very much doubt I will have won the war I'm sure it won't take him long to start pulling the hay out of the rack and dropping it onto the floor.

I was thinking about getting a waterproof exercise sheet, however decided on a fleece sheet in the hope that keeping him a little warmer may make him less inclined to leap around. I got a cheap one out of the saddlery and put it on him yesterday before going for a hack. He looked like a little race horse! It seems to do its job, as although he was still like a bouncing ball, he was much less tense through his back and hindquarters.

I've decided to try and be really disciplined and ride in the school 3 times a week (weather and ground surface permitting) and then hack twice at the weekend. It's difficult as it is an outdoor school and the flood lights create shadows everywhere. Wolfie normally spends his time spooking at his own shadow. I rode him for half an hour in the school tonight. It took him a good ten minutes to settle, but after that he was fantastic. I have started to ask him for a bend. We concentrated on 20m circles, serpentines, figure of eights in walk, with alot of halt transitions in between. Towards the end I asked for a couple of strides leg yield from the three quarter line back to the track. By the second attempt he had really got the idea and managed a couple of correct strides. He was really trying tonight and with both of us concentrating on something new, he started to really work through his back, walking really forward with that big long free stride of his.

Rodeo

Wolfie did a pretty impressive rodeo horse impersonation today. He was really fresh and the air was icy cold. I dismounted and worked him quite hard from the ground before getting back on. I think I'm going to have to work him before getting on in the future, just to take the edge off him a bit. He has such a soft responsive mouth and is readily accepting and looking for a contact. I remember an instructor once describing the feel of the reins between the rider's hands and the horse's mouth as being like a knife slicing through soft melted butter. For the first time, I can properly feel that sensation with Wolfie. I just hope I can keep him this way, it's a huge deal to be so responsible. If he gets hardened or less sensitive it will be my fault.