Bob is one of those horses. He gets charged up at the beginning of a ride and jigs and bounces and all that and I have to keep circling and circling him until he gets the edge off. After about the first 30 minutes he's fine. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he's coming up on 4 and that's the age when they seem to want to test your authority and see what they can get by with. Hope and Grace are still pretty compliant, even in large groups, and even though they're still what I'd consider green broke, but I'm sure their time is coming.
Hopefully you and that lady can get together and have some good rides. BladeRider and I had a good one yesterday. It ended up being just she and I because her husband's horse has a pretty bad case of the Heaves right now and we were afraid that it would be too much on him to take him out on the trail so he and Gary stayed back at the camp and took a nap.
I rode Hope for the 2nd time and I was real pleased with her. I made her go first the whole ride even though she didn't want to. She was very unsure and spooky at first. I mean, we spent 10 minutes trying to get past a kiddie pool that someone had set up for their dogs at their campsite, right at the beginning of the trail, but as the ride progressed her confidence seemed to build and she handled all the hills and mudholes and rocks and logs very well.
I think that the more you take a horse into unfamiliar situations, the more their trust in you as a leader builds and they finally reach a point where they don't question your decisions like they did at first and are much more layed back with the whole experience because they know you're going to take care of them. So I hope y'all can manage to keep going out and going to new places, because to me, that's the most fun thing of all.
Yeah. Over all I'm pleased. I give us a B. (an A for effort and a C for riding). I still have lots of work but I probably didn't pick the easiest to start with. I want to go back to the beach with just my husband or maybe another rider and work out the beach stuff and then the herding). I can't figure out how this horse came from a dude ranch though.
You mean "Tickrider" don't you? My poor little horse has gotten so fat that my husband says he looks like tick. Blade was not to happy last night and this morning when Jake and Queen got grain and he did not. Wiat until the grazing muzzle comes! That extra weight was just to much for him to pull those hills.
You know, I've come to the conclusion that horses from about 3 yrs to 5 yrs, are actually better behaved then 6 yr olds to 10 yr olds:). The younger ones, are still insecure enough to WANT to be guided, then they hit what I call the teen years, and the want to develop a mind of their own:)
If you can get one thru those middle years and they still be good...then you'll have a really really nice horse.
Becky