"Savvy Horse Transport"

I had a nice afternoon this afternoon.  I helped Anne move two of her young horses home to the mountains after their stay on the coast.

I have posted a blog previously about how I get so confused about my horsemanship goals.  I put so much time and effort into caring for my horses, and increasing my knowledge, and to what end?

Having a couple of hours in the car to ponder this afternoon, I thought maybe I should become a horse transporter!!!  I enjoy carting horses around.  Long drives don't worry me.  And after recently watching a few episodes of Parelli's "The Horsemans Apprentice", www.thehorsemansapprentice.com the thing that got me the most excited was the impressive horse trucks, goose necks and pick ups!!

Surely there is a market for personalised horse transport!

Pete and I already have a reputation for moving donkeys around here.  Some people contacted us once and asked if we could move a donkey for them.  After that the word got around and we had several requests to move donkeys.  It seems to be something that poses quite a challenge.

We went to one place to move two donkeys and the owners were amazed that we calmly had them on our stock trailer in next to no time.  Apparently the previous time they had to move them they had contacted a horse transporter who had come out with their truck, they couldn't get them on after several hours, so they went and got another truck or trailer of some sort.  After several more hours they still wouldn't budge, so in desperation, after spending the whole day trying to get two donkeys to go on a truck, they called on a neighbour with a tractor and they lifted them in with the front end loader!!!  So I understand why they were so surprised when, with a little Natural Donkeymanship, we were able to get the donkeys moved stress free!!

So maybe their is a niche there for me.  Teaching horses to load on floats is one of my favourite things.    How can I get this to work for me?

Seeing results!

I am still really enjoying trimming our own feet.  Well, our horses that is.  It took me so long to have a go at it.  In fact I avidly avoided it!  Partly because I thought it would be 'hard' physically, but also because I wasn't confident to attempt it.  Having a masters degree in Analysis Paralysis with honours in procrastination, I just didn't think I had the knowledge to do it, and thought I might do damage to my horses.

But there were things I could see weren't right with their feet, and bodies, even to my 'uneducated' eye.  So I finally took the plunge and decided to get educated.  Now I am obsessed!  I pick up every foot on every unsuspecting horse I come across!

Their is still so much to learn.   I am only on my second round of trimming our horses (there are a lot of feet in my paddock!), and already I can see changes!  It is very satisfying to see frogs spreading and walls growing down.

I have Pete Ramey's Under The Horse Dvd series.  http://www.hoofrehab.com/  It is 16 hours long, and most of it theory, and I am watching it through for the second time.  Something to keep me entertained when I go to bed with my cup of tea at night...

School bus run.

I don't get to ride my horses nearly as much as I would like to. Naturally enough with the life I lead! So I try and get creative with spending time with them. I have found all sorts of ways of making sure they get exercise, and attention.

One way I get them to walk each day is by separating their food from their water. I feed them here at the house, but can turn off the water, so they have to walk a couple of kilometres over fairly rugged terrain to get to the dam for a drink. It also optimises the grazing. If they didn't have to go find water, they tend not to go find grass either, and just hang around the house waiting for the bucket lady to turn up!

All of our horses are completely relaxed with being led off the motor bike too. So if I have to go and do a job around the place, I will take a couple of horses with me, so they get to go do something.

Another opportunity to take them for a jog is getting the boys off the school bus in the afternoon. This is usually Ruby's time with me. We trot up to the bus, get there a bit early so she can graze, then trot home again. Because we live at the end of a quiet road, I often take her head collar off, and we mosey home, playing mare and foal game with the bike. When we get through the last gate, we race up the driveway! It is lots of fun. She enjoys it. She usually canters up to the piece of rubber that sits outside our shed that she has claimed as her own, and waits for all the apple cores to arrive out of the kids bags!

Yesterday I tried to video this, but Ruby is very camera shy, she feels pressure from me when I am focusing on her with a camera, and her right brain introvert nature comes out! She is such a hard horse to get a nice photo of because she just can't look at me when I am pointing a camera at her! So she isn't sticking with me as well as she normally does at the walk. But it gives you a bit of an idea of what we get up to!

What a day!

I had the busiest day today!  Nothing dramatic, just really busy, and the rest of the week is going to be much of the same.  I was looking forward to getting home, and getting to relax.  But not so...

When I was mixing up the horse feeds I received a phone call to say that my 3 year old Quarter horse gelding had finally found his inner cow herder and was chasing new born calves on the agistment property he lives on.  This horse has lived with these same cattle on and off all his life!  Why, today, did he decide it would be fun to give them a run for their money, and apparently he was really chasing them, and knocking them over, then trying to get them up so he could do it again.  I think he mistook them for fluffy green balls!  Understandably the owner of the cattle was not happy!!!

So I got the float on, and the kids back in the car, and off we went to do some impromptu horsemanship in the dark!  They are running on a 900 acre dairy farm, and have had minimal handling in a long time.  So for starters I was going to have to catch them!  When I arrived, it was a peaceful scene.  Three horses grazing calmly amongst a mob of cows in the full moon light.  I was expecting carnage after the phone call I had!

To my delight it only took a couple of minutes to catch them.  Getting them on the float took quite a bit longer.  Silky, our old mare, was hesitant, and a little confused about the interruption to her settled life, she was pretty worried about being whisked away under the cover of darkness!  But it didn't take long to reassure her that all was well, and she hopped on the float.  Split has barely been taught to lead, and is a left brain thug, who was a left brain thug on right brain adrenalin, so therein lay our challenge!  Silky was amazingly calm, nervous, but obedient, and stood patiently on the float while I spent an hour taking the time it took to convince Split it was ok.

This all sounds reasonably calm.  I am leaving out the fact that their was a third horse involved, a thoroughbred, not mine, that spent the whole time galloping around the car and float and screaming out.  I had two unconfident horses on line, in pitch dark with three small children to help.  And help they did.   They were amazing.  Ciaran helped by sitting in the car for the whole time.  Justin and Jack were awesome and I am so proud of them.  I was just as happy having an 8 and 10 year old team of assistants as I would have with most adults I know.  They were very patient, their skills were wonderful, and we all stayed calm!  They had to keep themselves safe from the loose horse, calm the nervous horse standing in the float waiting, hold the young horse when I was putting the older on.  They were in charge of the carrot stick outside, and their timing was immaculate.  Every time that horse made an effort to think about the float, they stopped.

I was so proud of how they handled the pressure.  They listened carefully, and did everything they were asked, when they were asked.  It was a dangerous situation, and I trusted them completely.

We took the horses to town and got pizza for dinner as a reward for working as a great team!  I am also proud of the horses.  I was saying to the boys that it was a huge achievement to have done what we did in the dark in only an hour.  It could have been a very different picture!  In a different world we could have been chasing the horses around the huge paddock trying to catch them for an hour!  My boys know no other type of horsemanship, they take it for granted that this is how things are, that you can drive out in to the middle of a couple of hundred acre paddock, catch an unstarted three year old, float load him, and be on your way!  I love it!

My wild cow chasing horse, Split.

Ansur Excel

Ruby blowing and releasing after her first ride in the Ansur...

Well, today I FINALLY got to have a quick ride in the Ansur Excel saddle.  (http://www.ansursaddle.com/excel.html)

I have to say, I was impressed!  By the time I got to ride, it was nearly dark, and blowing a gail.  Ruby hasn't been ridden for months, it seems.  I put the saddle on, only asked for a circle each way online, and hopped on.  Ruby was on her toes, and I didn't want to push things, so opted for familiar territory instead of an argument and went up to the round yard.

She was a little distracted and oversensitive, so I asked her to follow the rail, then I asked her to bend a little, do a partial disengagement along the rail, and bring her hind leg under her.  This is something Ruby has a LOT of trouble with.  She is usually very resistant, stiff, confused, and generally really troubled when I ask her to do this.  I have tried different saddles, all with the same results.  I thought a lot of it was the saddles, but a lot I also put down to her defensive attitude.  So what a surprise I got when she was doing whole laps stepping under with her hind feet!  Both ways! With her ears forward!!!!  Unheard of!

Then we just trotted some nice gentle serpentines, and she was dropping her head, rounding her back, and relaxing.  Since it was getting late anyway, I called it quits with that.

When I hopped off she dropped her head and blew and licked and chewed for quite a while.  It was lovely to hear those long, relaxing, loose, blows.

I found the Ansur very comfortable for me too.  It puts me in a slightly different position than I am used to, and I need to play with it a lot more, but I didn't feel like I was struggling to find my seat.  It is lovely.

So I can't wait to have another ride!!

Lucy...

Here is a short video of Lara having a ride on Lucy. Lucy has had maybe half a dozen rides...

I am still playing with Lucy in my 'spare time', which there never seems to be enough of! She is such a cutie, and quick! Last week I had her out on a 22' rope and she was galloping, bucking and kicking and having a great old time, then she screeched to a slide stop, picked up a hula hoop in her mouth, and stood there and looked at me and asked what I thought... I thought, 'Oh, man. This play is really cool on the ground, but how is our obedience going to go when I am riding her?'.
I had a little play with her this afternoon, and she was lovely and calm and soft, so I took her in to the round yard and hopped on and had a little ride. At first she was surprised, and kept turning around and looking at me, no bareback pad or saddle, but she soon relaxed.
I quickly found out that Lucy is really confident with me up there! She has had a few rides, but hasn't really had to do anything yet, just accept the rider. Since she is confident now, it is time to ask a little of her. If we sat there too long without doing anything, she would reach around and grab the fringe of my chaps, so we got busy really quickly!
We didn't do much, she offered to put her nose on or pick up everything she could find in the round yard. I asked her to stick on the rail for a while, she obliged, but thought that was pretty boring and much prefered her idea of checking stuff out. We started doing some disengaging hindquarters and bringing her front end through which she found really easy.
She is soooo soft! When I go to disengage her I just have to barely think about it, turn my toe out and she floats around! When I ask her back on to the rail it is a mere tightening of my little finger.
We only had a short session, since she is so keen to play, and is confident and eager, I want to keep it that way!!

Hempfling - Horse Dream - Klaus with his horse at liberty in wilderness

I love this video of Klaus Hempfling. Plenty to aspire to in this one!!!

Al the Nearly Loadable

I haven't been on my youtube account for ages, and I logged in this morning and was going through some of my old videos and came across this one of me playing with Al, and it brought back lots of memories, and brought up lots of emotions! This horse is an off the track thoroughbred who had severe float loading trauma, and had also bowed a tendon, so he was headed to the slaughterhouse. I asked the owners if, since he was probably going to be put down anyway, could I please have him. After some consideration they said if we could get him home we could have him...and there the fun began. He was 8 hours away from our place. The kids and I travelled to him and I spent a week playing with him every day to get him in a position where he would load on a horse truck to travel to our place.

The first time we went to see him, I led him past a float, and he hit the end of the 22 foot rope before I could even turn around to see what was happening. I mean this horse had MAJOR float issues. But he was a successful racehorse, how did they get him to the track? I heard later that they had parked the trailer and the end of a cattle loading ramp and chased him on with a stock whip until he ran up the race and fell in the trailer. Otherwise they conditioned him to get on one of their floats, it was a big, open, four horse angle load. He would run on to it full pelt, and then you snapped him in real quick. As soon it was time to unload you made sure you were out of the way, unsnapped him, and he would scramble out of there blindly. Absolutely terrified. But he had been beaten so many times he decided the fear of that trailer was the better of two evils. The first thing I made clear to him in the first few minutes of our time together away from that place was that that would never happen to him again.

Once I got him home we played with him for 18 months rehabilitating his injured leg, and his faith in the human race. He spent most of his time running in the bush with our herd, as he was well bred and 'valuable' and I doubt ever allowed to take the risk of being allowed to behave like a horse! It was not easy. This horse has been my greatest teacher yet. It was sooooo frustrating!!! But so valuable, and so rewarding and I am a better person for having had him in my life! Ask Chris Corbidge, one of my instructors, she got many an email along the lines of "Oh, my goodness, Chris, what on earth am I going to do!?! This horse is going to be the death of me!!" But I never gave up on him. I put him back in the paddock a few times when I was out of answers, but I never gave up.

When I look back at this video, which was somewhere along his journey, not the end product, I have a sense of pride at giving this guy a chance, and I also smile at the memories I have of our time together, it is a wry smile, he was a hard teacher, but a good one!

Al did eventually accept the float as a safe place, and his 'unhealable' bowed tendon healed beautifully. He now has the perfect relationship in a new home with a lady who loves him to bits, and has bought him a new car, a new float, and now a new farm! And he will never experience fear like that again, and he will never be forgotten around here either, as frustrating as he was for me, our whole family, as well as many others who become involved in his journey, completely fell in love with him. I don't think any animal should have to be put in the situations that this trusting, gentle, noble horse was exposed to. He was destined for the slaughterhouse, his 'usable' life was over, and he was only five years old when I got him.

Big Al, you're a legend!

Jack and Honey

Jack having fun with Honey today!