Still Time : August 2013

As much as I'd like to pretend that everything is peachy keen and perfect, it has become glaringly obvious to me that new horses do not come without struggles. My struggle with Tim comes in the form of a rather pony like behavior - drop head, spin in circles repeatedly until allowed to return to the herd. SO MUCH FUN. Except when he tries to run us into a trailer. Or a fence. Or a truck. Or another horse. See where I'm going with this? The fact of the matter is that the spinning becomes more and more dangerous every time it happens, yet I have absolutely no effing clue what to do about it. I can sit back and pony club kick him, crack him with the whip, try to turn him around, etc. but we just end up spinning continuously until I get freaked out enough to dismount or someone leads us from the ground. I also don't know him well enough yet to know when it's coming, nor am I brave enough to beat the shit out of him and show him who's boss. This leads me to my questions... have any of you ever dealt with a spinner? How did you handle it when it happened? More importantly, how did you prevent the behavior from recurring?

The spinning started the first time we hacked out alone at home. He was great, perfect really, until we got to the scary section of the farm near a house that is under construction. Scary noises, spooky corn, new farm - okay, I convinced myself that he was just getting settled and that it wouldn't be a problem again. Then, a few days later as we walked away from the barn towards the jump field, same deal. This time, my trainer saw it and had to lead us to the field because he refused to walk forward. That leads us to yesterday, when we schooled XC for the first time. He was a saint until my trainer told us to warm up and we split off from "the herd." We were calmly trotting around when he suddenly grabbed the bit and dive-bombed for the nearest trailer with a horse tied up. In one of the more embarrassing and scary moments of my life, we almost spun into the horse and trailer and once again had to be led away by the poor owner of said horse/trailer.

Now, I am fairly certain that all of this originated in insecurity in me as a leader, barn sourness, and herd boundedness (?). Limerick had his barn sour/herd bound moments, but nothing at all resembling Tim's go-to maneuver. I'm sure that he is just testing me, and right now he is definitely winning the battle. Luckily, the rest of our XC schooling adventure was mostly uneventful, though we're hopefully going again this week to work out some kinks. Have bunches of pictures from yesterday, HUGE shout out to the bestie for documenting the whole experience :)