The Novice Horseman Blog

Attitude Is Everything . . Choose A Good One

This plaque was hanging at the entrance to the holding pen for a horse show.  Every exhibitor walked or rode past it every time they entered for their next class.  Most acknowledged the importance of the message. 

To me, this means I should have a winning attitude.  Knowing I have done my best to prepare both me and my horse, I come out a winner even if I don’t place in class.  I treat my horse with the respect that he deserves.  I take responsiblity for the mistakes that are made.  I don’t blame my horse for every missed cue.  I try to ride with a gentle hand, a quiet leg and a soft seat.  I’ve found that this gets better results even if my horse is having a bad day.  I try to be polite, courteous and pleasant to all around me.  Good manners should not be lost in the horse world.  I arrive a little early.  I offer my help if needed.  Finally, I have fun!

 Attitude Is Everything . . Choose A Good One

What does this mean to you?  I encourage you to leave a comment. 

Even though Iggette is gone now, she still has lessons to teach.    Let’s talk about securing the stall door & gates.  Most people look at the latch on any typical stall and wonder how in the world can a horse open it.  Well let me tell you, Iggette was quite an escape artist.  She learned this little feat while at the first stable and continued it at other stables.

The small pasture I originally put Iggette in just didn’t work out as planned.  She was the only horse there and horses just don’t fair well by themselves.  So I moved her to a shed row with 3 large paddocks and each paddock was shared by 4 stalls.  Everyone who had stalls here rotated paddock time.  Iggette had other horses to visit and a mare next to her.  I felt like I had her in a pretty safe place.  The stall was big, it was in good condition, the stall door was a partial door so that she could stick her head out and socialize and the paddock was secure.  The stall & paddock gate had “horse-proof” latches, so I knew she would be safe.

I’m one of those anal types when it comes to checking & rechecking for closed & locked doors.  When I left everyday, I must have checked the stall door 5 times, the feed room door 10 times and the paddock gate 20 times.  I absolutely wanted to make sure that my horse came to no harm through my carelessness.  Can you imagine the shock I felt one day when one of my friends called me at work to say my horse was out.  Not just out of her stall, not out of the paddock, but out in the open field!!!!  This field had no fence and it was only a few yards from a busy street.  I rushed from worked to the stable.  As I drove up the long driveway, I saw my friend out in the pasture trying to coax Iggette AND her friend to come to her.  I went to the tack room and got a bucket of grain.  If Iggette was anything, she was a chow hound.  I just knew she would come to me with this temptation.  To my surprise, Iggette thought much more of her freedom at the time than what her belly would normally tell her.  Everytime I got near her, she would turn tail & sprint off in the opposite direction.  Remember I told she was hard to catch and she was certainly living up to that on this day.

I talked with my friend while trying to catch up with these two.  She told me she didn’t know how they got out.  She came out to feed her horse which was in the paddock next to mine.  She noticed that my horse was not anywhere to be found.  She looked for her and just happened to catch a glimpse of her through an alleyway between our shedrow and the one behind us.  That’s when she called me.  Since we weren’t having much luck trying to catch them, we changed out tactics.  We decided to try to herd them into a semi-enclosed area.  There at least, we might have a chance putting a halter on them.  Funny how things work out.  Iggette led us right into the alleyway and actually caught herself.  I was quick to put a halter on her and my friend caught the other horse.

I put my horse back in her stall.  The other horse, we just left out in the paddock since it was her time to be out.  Iggette had another idea.  I was standing not far from the stall talking with my friend, all of a sudden Iggette’s stall door flew open.  Iggette promptly walked out and went over to her mare friend.  She actually herded the mare back into her stall & closed the door on her.  She didn’t lock, just pushed it shut.  Then she returned to her stall and closed her door.  My jaw just about hit the dirt.  My friend & I looked at each other in total amazement.  How did she do that?!

It was time for a little investigative work.  I locked Iggette’s door and all of the others in our paddock area.  In no time, Igggette’s head popped over the door and started jiggling the latch with her lip.  You’ve seen how a horse will curl their lip when you scratch just the right spot, well that’s what her lip looked like.  It was only about 30 seconds later and she was out of her stall.  She went next door and got her lip working over that latch.  Soon, her friend was out and they both went over to the gate.  Iggette once again got the lip going.  Fortunately for us, I had figured out where she was going and just got to the gate before it too went flying open.

An escape artist had been born.  Now the hard part was going to figure out how to keep Iggette in her stall and keep her safe.  We start with making sure the “horse-proof” latches have a way to lock it closed.  Get a swivel snap or double ended snap & secure the stall door latch.  A simple $2 piece of hardware can give you piece of mind.  It may be more of a pain to the open the stall door, but wouldn’t you rather have a friendly face meeting you at the stall instead of you meeting your worst fears opening an empty stall?

I’ve been referring to my first horse in several posts.  Let me introduce you to Juniper Moon Wind, affectionately called Iggette.  If you’ve read my posts on what & what not to look for, this is a very good lesson in what NOT to do for your first horse.  Iggette, in her younger days, was an absolute nightmare for any novice.  I will add that in time with a lot of patience & training, she became the best horse ever for both me and the countless students that she taught how to ride and overcome their fears.

Iggette is a race bred Quarter horse.  In 1979, she was in training at a smaller track in my area.  She had about 60 or 90 days of training.  To be quite honest, I just don’t remember anymore.  As with a lot of young race horses, her legs just couldn’t stand up to the strain of hard training.  Before she ever had an official race, she hurt her front legs.  This wasn’t a life threatening injury, but it did end her race career.  The only good therapy was complete rest.

Iggette was taken off the track to recover at her owner’s home.  She was put in a pasture with feeder cows.  Unfortunately for Iggette, she has a lot more cow sense in her that a race horse should have.  She herded the cows around the pen, cut them into corners and wouldn’t let eat.  She did this several times a day.  Let’s just say she wouldn’t let the cows fatten up and a skinny cow is not what you want to take to the butcher.  To top this off, Iggette bucked off the owner’s wife when she was ridden.  Remember Iggette only had race training, she didn’t know how to be a pleasure riding horse.  This just added insult to injury.  It was time to sell her.

This is where I come in.  I had never owned a horse, I had never taken care of a horse and I had only ridden a few backyard pets that my friends had.  I was a stupid 20 something and was just as horse crazy then as when I was at 4.  Oh yeah, I was also recuperating from a very bad fall off a lesson horse trying to learn how to jump fences.  I was told Iggette was going to the sale barn and I just couldn’t let that happen.  I talked my husband into buying her.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with her, but I knew I couldn’t let her go to the sale where she might end up in the hands of the killers.  I bought her without even going to look at her first.  This is how I became a novice owner.

When I went to get her, her former owner had offered to trailer her for me since I had neither a truck or trailer.  Being off the track, I thought she would just jump in the trailer & off we’d go.  We tried loading her the normal way by just walking into the trailer, she won that battle.  We tried a rope around her backside to try to pull her in, she won that battle.  We tried backing the trailer in the ditch so she wouldn’t have very far to step up, she won that battle.  We finally had to put her in a stall and back the trailer up to the door.  After an hour of trying to coax her in, we won – sort of.  She did get in the trailer, but she did the 4-foot shuffle all the way to her new home.  Whew, was I glad that was over.

Iggette’s new home was a stable not far from my house.  I did the good owner thing and walked her around the pasture so that she would know the fenceline.  Just as I took off her halter, a jet flew overhead as it was taking off from the airport.  The airport was less than a 1/4 mile from the stable.  Needless to say it was low and loud.  Iggette reared up at the sound of very loud jet engines & took off running.  She had never heard this sound before & it scared the daylights out of her.  I couldn’t catch her the rest of the day.  Within a week, jets didn’t phase her anymore.  Catching her while in the pasture remained one of her biggest vices for quite a few years though.

As for riding her, I quickly learned race training is just what it implies.  The only gaits she knew how to do were a fidgety walk and run at top speed.  I needed help and decided to use the resident manager/trainer.  This was another big mistake.  ALWAYS - ALWAYS - ALWAYS check out the trainer before hand.  Talk with some of their customers, watch a few of their training sessions and talk with other people in their barn.  If the trainer discourages or flat out won’t let you talk to their clients or watch them train, pass them up.  Don’t even think about it.  After finding out a few of his “training techniques”, I knew this was definitely not the trainer for me or my new horse.

I suffered through trying to train her myself or maybe it was Iggette who suffered through a complete novice trying to train a green horse.  We didn’t get very far.  Since I had no idea of what I was doing, the best I could manage was a somewhat slower walk and a trot that would jar your teeth out.  I didn’t try to lope at this point.  To be quite honest, I was intimidated and she knew it.  She never tried to dump me or rub me off on the nearest fence, but she was never willing to give to in to me either.  She seemed to do better with women than with men.  My husband would ride her and she would do little bunny hops sideways.

So to sum up this part of my novice experience:
I bought a 3 yr old horse.
I bought a horse off the racetrack.
I bought a horse that only had race training and no other type of training.
I bought a horse I had never even seen.
I bought a horse from sheer emotion.
I bought a horse that at times was almost impossible to catch.
I bought a horse that would not load in a trailer.

How many more wrong things can a person do?

You can see now why I am passionate about helping other novice horsemen out there.  It can be mighty painful without some experienced help.