Monday, October 8, 2007

A Baby Boomer Dreams of Arabian Horses - The Maiden Season Part 11



Part 1 of the Baby Boomer Series

Part 1 of the Maiden Season

The hard part about staying in bed, (besides the fact I don't know how to sit still) was I needed to be working on conditioning the young Arabian stallion for his coming halter futurity. An awful headache reminded me if I tried to get up and move sooner than I was ready. Otherwise, I'd not sure I would have obeyed doctor's orders since the show date was rapidly approaching.

But gradually I did get back to conditioning Legs and working on his halter stance. The Arabian horse knew what he was doing because he had been shown as a yearling. But I didn't have a clue. It was time to get some lessons for halter.

I hauled the horse down to visit my friend, Jean. She's a whiz in halter so I knew I was in good hands. To be perfectly honest after this last accident, I was having some problems with fear. The fact that Legs had run me down was ever present in my mind. We were going to start with her schooling the young stallion and then in a couple of weeks I would be recovered enough to take halter lessons.

When Dave and I arrived with Legs, Jean had Dave just turn the stallion loose into the arena while she finished up a couple of things. This facility was built with a barn aisle with stalls on each side running down both sides of the arena. So the horse immediately ran down those wall sniffing and calling for horses on the other side.

One of those horses was a rank pony stallion. He didn't like Legs on the other side of his wall and began to challenge the horse through the wall. Trapped inside the stall was the owner who had been trying to clean. Now the rank stud had her cornered and terrified as he tried to attack Legs through the wall.

Jean went to free the owner instructing Dave to catch Legs. I was sidelined still from my injury so I could only watch as Dave tried to catch Legs and listen to the screaming pony stallion.

Fortunately for the pony's owner, Jean is as great hand with a horse. No one else could have extricated the owner from that stall and got the pony stud caught up and tied as quickly and safely as Jean did.

In the meantime, Dave was still trying to catch the naughty young stallion. By the time Jean came back, Legs was still running circles around my husband. Every time Dave would try and cut him off or block the horse, Legs figured a way to get through. The horse didn't want to be caught because he really wanted to see what all the commotion on the other side of the wall had been.

Jean was the first to point out that Legs was respecting even Dave's space. At no time, did the horse ever try to go directly through the man. And yet Dave rarely makes the horse mind, whatever respect the horse was showing Dave was because of what the horse had learned from me.

It was obvious to all of us, there was no way the accident in the field had been anything more than an accident. If the horse wasn't deliberately running over Dave under these circumstances, he sure hadn't deliberately mowed me down while only playing in the field. The horse just had not seen me until he hit me. That was a relief for me to know.

By the time the horse show rolled around, I was feeling better but still didn't have the hang of halter. The equipment and the stance all seemed foreign to me. So when I got the horse ready for his class, I put the show halter on with a regular stable halter over the top and the lead tied around the horse's neck. I didn't want to take any chances on the show halter breaking on the way up to the ring.

I had seen trainers do this and thought it would work well for me. But the fact is when you are clumsy with the equipment most anything can happen and it did.

When we got up to the ring, I heard first call for our class. I began taking off that regular stable halter. As I fumbled with the unfamiliar equipment I managed to get the lead of the show halter caught up in regular halter. In trying to get it untangled, I somehow lost my grasp.

The regular halter plunged to the ground and the horse raised up and moved back a step from the sound. Then in that brief instant as I reached to grab the lead, the horse realized he was loose.

To be continued.........

Part 12

8 comments:

  1. MIKAEL!!! Maybe I should only visit twice a wk or something so I am not in suspense so much... oh well. *breathes deeply* "I'm sure it turns out OK. Everything went FINE..."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh no! I know how bad it is to have a horse get loose at a show. It is soooo embarrassing! Fortunately, my loose horse was a gelding who let me catch him fairly easily. I am sure a loose stallion was a completely different story. I can't wait to see what happened!

    You TOTALLY need to write a book about your life. Your writing style is very nice, and your life is full of excitement - perfect for a novel. I'd buy it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Uh oh!! Again...hope this turns out well!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. When I took the dramatic fall side saddle the most embarrassing thing was my mum. No she didn't throw a pink fit, she just went and caught the horse!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Okay are you sure you aren't at my house? So many things happening in a row, seems like my house.

    And another cliff hanger. I hope he was a good boy and didn't bolt...

    ReplyDelete
  6. MiKael, you are just like an old friend of mine...I was always a bit reluctant to ask how she was because there was always some crisis going on! I think you need to change the name of your blog to something like "MiKael's Perils and Escapes from Death"!

    The "Big Boys" make halter showing look so easy, but it's not. That's the big trouble we're having trying to do halter with our 2 year old. We don't know what we're doing and don't have any help.

    ReplyDelete
  7. l, Sorry about that, it's just the way this darn year went. It was one thing after another AND that was before I had this many horses. I think I had only about 8 then. lol.

    julia, you are right. It is very embarassing to have a horse get loose at a show. And believe me I was beyond embarassed.

    As for writing a book, I hope someday to do so but with this life of mine it would have to be volumes. lol

    equinespirit, you would have to define "well." lol

    ro, I still can't imagine you falling sidesaddle. That must have been really scary.

    lady of chaos, Nope, I don't live at your house but have to admit when I first saw your name, I laughed and thought, that could be me. lol

    showmama, hopefully the "escapes from death" are over for my life and I could do without the perils as well. lol

    As for halter, I've finally taken enough lessons and clinics that I'm beginning to get the hang of it. I'm going to take another clinic this next month too. But I'm beginning to feel more confident about it. Get videos to study from.

    ReplyDelete
  8. NNooooooo you cant do this to me again!!!!

    Will check back tomorrow for the next instalment LOL

    Lori
    xx

    ReplyDelete