Mouthy Mondays

Good morning boys and girls..
Ignore me, I had a crazy week-end. Colics, county fairs, couple of good rides....action packed to say the least. The colic is over, we're all good there.

On to Mouthy Monday

FD wrote this one, it's a great discussion piece I think. She doesn't have a blog (yet) but writes so well I think we should start hounding her. Hee Hee.


The One That Got Away. (Metaphorically speaking.)

Do we all have horses that we look back on and wish we could have a do over? Mugs has mentioned it in passing, and god, I know I certainly do. I look back at the patient horses I rode in my teens and cringe, because I’d been taught to fiddle, (it took a dislocated shoulder to break me of the habit) but there’s one horse in particular from about ten years ago that really haunts me.

Bob was a lop-eared, woolly-dread locked chestnut with no shoes, a fat belly and a surprising amount of feather. I don’t think he’d ever seen a dressage arena and he certainly wasn’t ready to compete. We reckoned the dealer he was bought from had seen his (novice) owner coming. He was, according to his papers, genuinely a TB. But he was of a peculiar type of TB – the bog-Irish type, and incredibly ignorant with it. He went upside down, he was dead to the leg, no mouth to speak of, and he had a bone-jarring trot and proper leg-flailing-wall-of-death canter. He wasn’t the most prepossessing event prospect.

On the other hand, he was sound, clean legged, quiet to handle, with a nice pop in him and seemed pretty much bombproof.

Streams? Okay.
Umbrellas? Whatever.
Braying donkeys? No problem.
Double-decker lorries full of sheep? Pfft.
Clippers? He wanted to know if they were edible.

He endeared himself to me forever when he’d only been at the yard three days by standing fast in the face of a couple of dozen 6ft by 6ft square sheets of polystyrene packaging sailing over the hedge at the bottom of the field and flying towards us. I braced the lead rope across his chest, and used him as leverage in order to (successfully) hang onto the other horse I was leading.

So, as far as I was concerned, he was off to a good start. The days turned into weeks and then months. Bob changed shape, his coat gleamed, his (horrible) feet grew out, and his way of going improved immensely; he learned to canter circles, and what a lateral aid was. He retained his goofy quality to handle on the ground and adored being groomed and fussed over.

There was just one fly in the ointment: sometimes for no discernible reason, he’d throw a wobbly. Now, don’t get me wrong, he was never going to win any rodeo awards, we’re talking buck, prop, spin, bolt the length of the arena before stopping and looking foolish territory. But it was disconcerting, in an otherwise dead quiet horse and rather frightened his owner. After one of the girls nearly fell under a HGV, we put him in a market harborough to hack out; if you were quick enough and strong enough you could boot him forward and haul his nose back in when he began to whirl. As a temporary solution this worked, but you can’t ride a test in one. I thought at first it was spooking or a confidence issue, and then I wondered if he was testing us, but it didn’t seem to make a difference how may times you corrected him or how forcibly.
It would come out of the blue, in no particular area and without prior tensing. We couldn’t find a pattern: not weather, not the tack, not the skill level of the rider, not particular movements. We looked at whether it was coming, going, being alone in the arena, being in company, in the lead, middle or rear. We even tried blinkers at one point. Being fresh or tired made no difference. Sometimes he wouldn’t put a foot wrong for weeks and then suddenly, I’d have to kibosh thirty or forty attempts in under an hour, and he’d still be trying it even when he was foamy with sweat. Other times, he’d do it once, then not at all for the rest of the ride.

And yes, we had him checked by a vet. And the dentist. And we checked for nutritional issues. And he was seen by a physiotherapist, and a chiropractor and the saddle fitter and we had his feet xrayed. (Two different chiropractors in fact. Also the black box man, the magnet pusher, the horse psychic and the crystal-healing lady. But those are stories for another day.)

He improved on the flat and over fences to the point where he could credibly do a Novice event, and started going out and about. He did OK, but with this quirk he had, he was not quite what you’d call reliable. One particular event, his owner came home in tears. He’d done a workmanlike dressage test, and a lovely clear cross-country. Unfortunately, he’d thrown two wobblies in the SJ arena and dumped her warming up.

She decided to sell him, and I can’t say she made the wrong decision, although I was frustrated. He’d been with us the better part of two years, and capable though he was, he wasn’t consistent, and that’s what she needed – she’d come off a few times and he was beginning to affect her nerve.

He went to a professional re-seller, who was definitely cautioned (I know, because I warned him myself) and was sold once, that I know of, to a semi-pro, who sent him on after a couple of weeks. The next I heard of him was some months later and rather sad news – he’d put a dealer in hospital with a broken back. Apparently he’d been taken out cross-country to be shown off for someone, and something had gone horribly wrong. I don’t know where Bob went after that, but I doubt it was anywhere good. I didn’t tell his ex-owner, who went on to have a hell of a lot of fun with a sweet Welsh/TB cross.

So what went wrong? I don’t know and that’s why he’s stayed with me – out of all the horses I’ve handled, I think he’s probably the biggest failure, and certainly one of the end results I’ve regretted most. And the bugger of it is, even now, I don’t know what I’d do differently.