Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Coralling our quarter horse

Before I write about this experience it should be noted, my experience with a horses is limited to the instruction of my wife, Sara. Sara has instructed me in the equestrian world and without her lessons I would have not attempted what we accomplished last night!
We have three horses at the farm, two of which we can saddle up and ride. Our youngest is a quarter horse, he has not been worked with much but we have gotten a saddle on him and Sara has ridden him for a short distance. He has become the alpha of the pasture and is downright stubborn when it comes to catching him. He will come up to us when we bring grain or he is curious. Try to put a halter on him however, that is a different story altogether! Sara had an idea to take him to another farm where she could put him into a small pen and separate him from the other horses.  This sounded like a good idea but both of us knew that catching him was going to be a bit difficult!
Sara backed the horse trailer up to our small pasture and set up a path to the trailer. Mr. Curious (his name is Babu) walked right into the pasture. We pulled the wire rope gate shut and started to work on moving him to the trailer. Sounds good so far! Well...not so much. he was not going to cooperate. Sara had a prod and whip to get him moving but all he would do is walk in the direction to trailer and bolt away when we attempted to push him into the trailer. No, I don't mean get behind him and shove, we used the prod, whip tried to get him to step into the trailer. About this time some of you may be wondering, why not put a halter on him and lead him into the trailer? Remember what I said about catching him to put a halter on him, not going to happen! At one point we had a rope to shorten the pasture and attempt to persuade him into the trailer, nope not having any of that he would just rear up and bolt through the rope! In one attempt he just broke through the electric fence as I am being yelled at for not being in front of the electric gate! Yelled at affectionately of course. So... now we had to replace the handles on the gate and both of us were hot, sweating and pissed! Our kids were standing guard to close the trailer gates and that was about all we could get from them to help. Neither one wanted to be in that pasture chasing a horse that could pummel them in a hurry. What was I thinking? Taking a break we devised a new plan; we would put the other two horses into the pasture to coax Babu back into the pasture. Once all three were in we would
separate the two from Babu and start over. This worked and we were back at it. Our dog is a healer but not trained very well when it comes to the horses. She likes to bark and run from them and Babu likes to chase her. We have witnessed Babu at a full gallop going after Spot (healer) through the pasture, zigzagging after her and believe me that dog was scared! So usually when we are working with the horses we keep her in the house. Well Sara's mom let her out. So now we have our dog ready for action and jumping into the fray. I swear, I thought I was going to blow a gasket! I know Sara was ready to blow! Well instead of putting the dog back into the house we decided to put her to work. We sent her after Babu and she did it somewhat; sometimes she herded him in the wrong direction.  Well by now the horse was sweating bullets, no literally the sweat was pouring off of him. Than the most amazing thing happened; Babu walked up to me as if to say I quit. I gently rubbed his neck and head and slowly wrapped a lead rope around his neck. He tore it from me a one point but I had it hooked around his neck and it did not come off. He came back up to me, now thoroughly exhausted and Sara managed to slip a halter on him. She also attached a small chain on the halter that would go over his hose. We were in business, or at least we thought so! Now that we had this hot sweaty exhausted horse in our hands we thought we could coax him into the trailer, not so much. After many attempts I took a hold of the lead rope with the chain and attempted as Sara did her best to coax him from behind; trust me I will forever look over my shoulder if my wife is going to attempt to coax me anywhere! Well this didn't work so I pulled him away from the trailer and made him walk in different directions, when he moved in the direction I wanted I switched up to another direction, working him hard for not cooperating. He got pissed and reared up, awesome to see unless you are the one holding the lead rope! He did this to me several times before landing on his feet realizing I wasn't going anywhere. So what do you do with a horse who will not go into the trailer no mater what? Saddle him up! That is exactly what we did. Sara got on him and rode him in the pasture. We decided we did not need to take him anywhere, we had made progress and it was enough. We also left the saddle on him over night, we are not finished with him and he also got to spend the night away from his buddies.
Babu
All I can say was it was an awesome experience and despite the danger of one us of getting hurt, I would do it again. Horses are interesting creatures who have a real sense of mind and when they respond positively it can be amazing. Our hope is to train Babu into being a great horse and one we can work with on the farm.

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