The Poetess and I have been busy in the past month.
Here's what we've accomplished:
She longes on both sides equally well now! No more confusion on what she's supposed to do when I'm on her right side. She will walk,trot, and canter without stopping and trying to spin about 2/3 of the way around the circle and I can stay in the middle rather than having to follow her closely on a shorter line to keep her moving.
She lets me touch her ears. Albeit somewhat grudgingly, but she's slowly learned that I just want to brush them (or put roll on fly repellent in them), I'm not going to grab them and twist (what I suspect may have happened in her past).
She hand grazes like a boss. Not a care in the world other than sucking up as much grass as I'll allow her to.
We've been working on getting her to stand still with one foot held up (as if the farrier were working on her). She's not bad for the farrier, but she's a bit wiggly, so I decided she needed to learn a bit more patience and that she can stand on three legs just fine when a human wants to hold her other foot.
Similarly, I'm teaching her the phrase "Stand" in conjunction with getting her legs wrapped in polo wraps before work (and after work, when removing polos.) It was too frustrating trying to keep the correct tension while wrapping -- and sometimes just plain getting the polo pulled out of my hand and having to re-roll it and start over, so OTTB or not, she needs to learn to stand statue still when I'm wrapping (or unwrapping) her legs. After five sessions of saying "stand" (and backing it up with a little bump of the lead rope if needed) before attempting to wrap each leg, she's caught on well and today she actually was that statue for all four legs.
Speaking of wrapping legs; her tail has grown and it now gets in the way when I'm trying to put on her polos. So now it gets put in a loose knot after brushing and then let down again after I wrap her legs. She stands for that too.
We have advanced to wearing a bridle. I know she's worn one before (she was trained and worked at the racetrack, she just was never fast enough that her trainer entered her in any races), but I wanted to take her back to ground zero and start all over again. Which, for me, meant longing in a halter and teaching her voice commands before putting a bridle on and longeing her off that. With her aversion to having her ears touched, I wasn't sure how she'd be about being bridled (possibly being one of those horses that likes to throw their head up and try to run backwards in avoidance). So the first time I tried bridling her, I did it in her stall with the door shut. Surprisingly, she was good and didn't mind at all when I touched her ears to tuck them under the crown piece of the bridle when putting it on. Good; as she obviously doesn't have any negative connotation to the bridle touching her ears.
From that initial bridling, we proceeded to longe with the bridle on under her halter and the longe line attached to the halter. In fact, if you look closely at the above picture of her going to the right on the longe, you can see that she's wearing a bridle and a halter. After a couple sessions of that, with no issues, I decided the time had come to longe her with the line attached to the bit (run through the near ring, over her poll, and attached on the off side) to see how she'd react.
She did awesome. Until I went to change direction, which meant unhooking the longe line and running it the opposite way through the bit rings and over her head. With one hand on the right bit ring, I held her while using the other hand to remove the longe line, then put it through the right bit ring and over her head. At which point something startled her, she threw her head up and yanked the bit from my hand. As soon as she realized she was free, she looked at me for a nanosecond, then wheeled and high tailed it for the barn. Being that the arena has no fence around it, I was suddenly plunged into every horseman's worst nightmare: LOOSE HORSE!
If this has ever happened to you, you know exactly the panicked feeling this evokes. The self-bashing (I should know better than to hold her by the bit while switching the longe line; I should have stuck the halter back over the bridle). The immense fear that the horse is going to a) run into the road and get hit by a car, b) run and run and never be seen again, c) slip and fall and injure itself. The swearing that comes out of your mouth as you follow in the direction you last saw your horse go, trying to move as quickly as you can to catch up.
Thankfully she ran up to the barn where the other horses ran up to greet her. Unfortunately, they all then turned and raced off in the opposite direction, three inside the fence and the Poetess outside, heading for the road. Luckily she stopped at the road and didn't try to cross it or run down it. And by the time I got to her, everyone was trotting merrily up to the barn again.
So, I was able to catch her, but I swear that was the longest ten minutes of my life, and I thought I might have a heart attack before laying hands on her. Once I got up to where she was trying unsuccessfully to graze with the bit in her mouth, I was able to tempt her with a horse cookie into standing still while I threw a halter on over the bridle. PHEW!
The rest of that session included walking (with a chain over her nose) back to the arena where we walked and halted and walked and halted and did not step a foot outside the arena without me being right at her head. Slowly my heart rate returned to normal and she cooled out from her exciting romp around the farm. I do have to say, as she was loose and doing an extended trot, I did have the fleeting thought that she's a beautiful mover. . . But hopefully the loose horse scenario will never be repeated.
In fact, her next work session had nothing at all to do with longeing and was completely and totally spent with me and the Poetess in a much smaller fenced in pasture area where I turned her loose, then after a minute or two called her name, followed by the command "Come", and held out a horse cookie. When she came to me, she got the cookie, lots of pats and "Good Girl!"s and I would hook the lead rope on and walk her a few laps, then unhook her and turn her loose. Repeat this for fifteen minutes, going through an entire pocketful of cookies. Hopefully if she ever does get loose for real, she will come when commanded to. Or, at least, stand still and not run off to the road.
We have, since then, begun longeing again, with the bridle under the halter. I have yet to attach the longe line through the bit rings, but plan to give it another try yet this week. With a lead rope clipped to the halter during the transition from attaching on one side to attaching on the other, of course.
Also, because she needed more polos than I had (mine are kind of old and some have 'died' since the last young horse I used them on) I did some shopping. Oh boy, the colors that are available now! My old ones are of the bright blue, bright green, bright red variety. This time I got some nice lighter colors, more girly, if you will, for my mare. And since they were on sale, and matching dressage pads were also on sale. . . well, what can I say? There's a little dressage queen in me.
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