When you work full time it's easy to get stuck in the routine of horse care and skip any training except for the "be polite at feeding time" training. And "move when I'm mucking your stall with a pitchfork" training. Plus there are a million chores to do to convert former horse barn to chicken/pig barn back to horse barn. Most recently I shoveled 3 yards of pea gravel to make "porches" for each entrance of the horses' stalls. That took two weekends of back-breaking work. Then we had gutters installed on the barn. So much better for managing mud!
Recently I was able to change my work schedule so that I have Wednesday afternoons off. This gives me time in the middle of the week, in the daylight to do some real training. But I needed a goal. Coincidentally my favorite trainer announced that she was planning an obstacle clinic later in October. I'm very interested but October weekends are basically full with visitors, a farrier appointment, and a scheduled weekend at work. Still, what would I need to be able to do to take one or both horses to obstacle training?
They need to be able to be separate from each other, they need to focus on me, go where I ask them to go, and trailer load. The first step was separation. At first I wasn't psychologically ready for Beege to run around like a freak when I took Odin out of sight, possibly hurt himself because he has arthritis and not enough sense to walk quietly, and I'm not super excited about tearing up part of the pasture. I've seen what kind of muddy mess he can create.
What to do? Phone a friend, who advised "pull your hair out and cry, then go fetal", which she admitted was no help whatsoever. Except that it was super helpful to know that my reservations were not unique and that I'm not a complete failure for not knowing how to address this very common problem. Some horses are fine left by themselves but most are not. I'm not ready for a third horse to be a companion horse to my companion horse. Eventually perhaps but for now, I shovel enough poop every day.
That afternoon I put on Big Girl pants, plugged in the electric fence and took Odin for a walk down the trail to the back of the property. Predictably Beege galloped and whinnied. Odin and I explored the bridge over the "salmon" stream (dry all summer), and looked at giant stumps then went back. Beege finally took a breathe when we returned but then Odin and I went up the driveway toward the house to check out the blue tarp over the weed wagon. Randy was just about to leave for a mountain bike ride but took a couple laps around the driveway so that Odin could see that bicycles aren't scary at all. Then we went back to a lathered Beege. Such relief when I let Odin back in the pasture.
The next day I repeated the journey with Odin. Beege was sweaty but not lathered. The following day I didn't have time to repeat the exercise so Beege got a day off from terror. Yesterday I repeated the exercise. Beege whinnied and paced but by the time we returned, he was still dry. That, to me, is progress. Real progress.
Feel free to follow my horses' progress on Instagram or Facebook, search for cmeqnomad.