A Baby Boomer Dreams of Arabian Horses - Rhythm's Story - The Park - Part 2

Part One of the Baby Boomer Series

Rhythm's Story starts here

As one young woman crawled off the Arabian horse. the other got ready to mount. I tried to get something done about adjusting stirrups but to no avail. What I got was it'll be fine just the way they were.

This isn't really my kind of answer. I like to have things like this done right. Do both women usually ride with the same length stirrup. If not, let's fix them. The last thing I want to do is be on a horse I don't know with stirrups that aren't right. If I get in trouble, I don't want to have equipment problems too.

I don't really want someone on a horse of mine without everything being right either. I don't want either the horse or the rider set up for failure. I didn't get my point across but I was confident that Rhythm would be ok. The horse had never done anything dangerous the whole time I've been riding him and I had put other riders on the horse before now.

At first the horse was too fast, that's all there was to it. By the look in his eye, I knew he was just doing as he was told. Telling someone to ride with "less leg" is not the norm, but in this case that was exactly what it took to fix the problem.

I think I actually had to tell her to pull her legs completely away from the horse before he settled down into a little jog. But it was clear to us on the ground and the rider that the horse was only doing as he was told. I don't know if it was rider tension that caused the tight grip or if she was used to a horse who needed more push. Whatever the cause, Rhythm was a horse that didn't require much leg to ride.

Just as I had the earlier rides, I rushed this one along too. Reminding both women this horse wasn't fit, we were pushing past the point of what I thought was reasonable. Rhythm was beginning to sweat. So once we had the jog fixed she did a brief lope each direction just to get a feel for this horse. With her tendency to use too much leg, that lope got nice and round. I think it's possible she actually ended up with a better lope the one way than the trainer.

As the second young woman climbed down from the horse, the conversation literally exploded. There was lots of laughing and giggling and I guessed from the content Rhythm had made quite an impression.

The horse was tired now and more like the usual Rhythm when he's worked regularly. He stood quietly while I unsaddled him. Then I walked him over to the wash rack and rinsed him off so they could see how he did with that. He was fine for both of those things. Quiet and co-operative, the horse he can be if he knows that you're in charge.

The sad part of this whole experience at the park was we didn't catch any of it on film. Neither of them had a camera and I had forgotten mine at home.

As we made our way back to my farm all I could think of was poor dad was at home taking care of their other three Arabian horses. He was the one going paying for this trip and he would be the one shelling out all of the money if they decided to purchase this horse. Yet we didn't have a single picture of his daughter trying out this horse. That was a crying shame.

I was still concerned that the women hadn't had a chance to see the worst of Rhythm's ground manners. This was really important to me. I didn't want to sell this horse without the people really understanding what they had gotten themselves in for.

It turned out I worried about that for nothing. When we got back home, I turned him out into the front paddock for a while as we talked. When I decided to catch him up and put him away, the horse was a real jerk.

First off he refused to be caught, something I hadn't seen since Harvey had worked with him four years before. It took all three of us to corner him, and maybe even we had to enlist Dave. Either that or he showed up just in time to decide to show me up. Somehow Dave did get involved too. That's what it took, four of us, to trap the horse and get him caught.

Even after he was in hand, he was naughty. He danced around on that lead like he should have come out of the stall that couple of hours before. I was relieved to see his antics and the fact both women only laughed at them helped me feel more assured that they did indeed understand what this horse could be on his worst day. So now it was up to dad.

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

This picture is of Rhythm when I took him down to the last Region 5 Championship Show held at the Puyallup Fairgrounds. I entered him in a halter class just so I could get him out around people. This was the year the twins were born and his first ride in a year!

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