Another Storm Coming

Another storm coming tomorrow. Somehow, I think the animals can sense this.

Today was a lovely day. Sunny, in the 30's and no wind. When I arrived at the barn today around 1:00 PM, Louie gave a loud bray of greeting when he saw me. As I am no longer the person delivering food 2x's a day. So, when he greets me, I do think it is because he is genuinely happy to see me. How cool is that? He led quietly up to the barn. Well, he did try to stop and visit with the 2 mini horses. He seems quite fascinated with them as they are with him. But, Louie is no longer paying much attention to Dolly mule when we go by her paddock. Nor is Dolly calling to him any longer. I think it is actually a good thing they were separated. Louie was so quiet leading up to the barn I was thinking it was going to be a real quiet easy day working with him. HA!

Once Louie was in the barn he became quite anxious and wiggled around a bit on the cross ties. But, didn't actually cross the line into being bad. He had quieted down by the time I was finished grooming and stood quietly while being saddled. Once I got him out into the arena.........Yeeeehaaaaa, the fun began. I quickly decided lunging him would be a good idea. And it was like having a 1000 lb flea on the end of the lunge line. He wasn't really bucking so much as jumping and bolting off at every little tiny sound and moving shadow. And I mean anything! I had put the chain over his nose so he didn't drag me around but he jumped, spun, bolted, jumped, bolted etc and it was quite a chore getting him to settle down and pay attention. Wendy, the barn owner, drove by the open arena door in her truck and when that went by, Louie went about 10' in the air and bolted off. Wendy mentioned she saw that when she came in later. Louie did finally settle down into some semblance of control after a bit and lunged fairly well.

I finally decided Louie might have blown off enough steam to be safe to ride. At least I was hoping. I led him over near the arena door where I dropped his bridle. I asked him to stand ground tied while I walked out of the arena and put away the lunging equiptment. He actually was pretty good about this. He only walked forward when he hear me crinkle some plastic thinking he was about to get a treat. I quickly backed him up and asked him to stand again and he did. Then, just as I was starting to slip his bridle on (standing with our backs to the arnea door) Wendy walked through the door and startled Louie who then bolted off dragging me with him. Thankfully, he didn't put much effort into it as he didn't go far. Or, it was the 200lbs of me hanging off his face.......

Wendy is working with my friend's mule Dolly doing some training with her. I asked Wendy how that was going. "Well," she said, "It's going fine I guess." After a minutes she then says to me. "You know with theses mules, whenever you ask them to do something, they want want to know why they should do it." I got a chuckle out of this as she was so right, this is definitely mule mentality.

Louie was a perfect boy for mounting. He lined right up to the mounting block first time and stood like a rock as I mounted and did not move an inch until I asked him to. But, once moving he was a bit light on his feet. And, the mule eating boogers were back along one side of the arena. He just did not want to walk straight down that side of the arena. At first when I was asking him to walk straight along the boogery side of the arena he locked his neck on me a couple times. But, only for a few seconds. I gave several quick sharp pulls on the reins to avoid getting into a pulling match I know I would not win. At the same time I asked for him to yield his hindquarters and he did. This did not get us by the boogers walking straight but it did get him to unlock his neck right away. Good enough for me. Someone had left a blue tarp on the ground in the arena. We walked over it several times and he didn't mind that at all. But, he's done this quite a few times before. After a while, Louie did settle down and relax and eventually did several very nice canter transitions for me. After I had untacked Louie I brought him back out into the arena to see if he wanted to roll in the sand (possibly not a good habit to get him into in the place I work him...) When I turned him loose, I could not get him to leave me at first. He just stuck right with me. I walked around for a bit and he just followed. After a few laps around the arena, he finally did decided to take a good roll and then came right back to me.

So, all in all it was another fun day with Louie at the barn. He sure is interesting to work with. I'm not sure who is teaching who the most but I do know we are both growing and learning with this time at the barn and arena. I'm getting really excited now about the prospect of trying him out at distance riding. Now that he is sound, he is showing more spirit then I originally gave him credit for. The question is how tough will he be. And I can definitely foresee the first few rides being a bit interesting at the start. I really think he is going to feed off the excitement of the other horses and be quite a handful at first.