Sizing Things Up.......A Little Hitch.........

Part 1

As the Arabian horse lurched forward, the bottom of my vest got caught over the saddle horn and for one frantic moment I was scurrying to get myself free. Visions of dangling from the saddle horn off the side of the moving horse or even hitting the dirt squirted through my brain as I struggled getting my vest freed. As my life flashed before my eyes I wondered should I be wearing my helmet. The last thing I needed was another head injury.

As I scrambled for the reins to get my horse under my control, I immediately pulled on the inside rein and added my inside leg to get the horse to move off my leg. I knew Storm probably hadn't dealt with my kind of a warm up for the past two years but I hoped his brain would quickly engage and he'd forget about being worried and begin listening to me so I could get myself safely situated in the saddle and ready to deal with him.

I met immediate resistance to the flex of the rein as I made contact with the horse's mouth. Thankfully it was short lived and the horse dropped his head and moved laterally as asked. Before long my heart quit beating out of my chest as the horse softened and began paying attention to me. Still I could see his eye was worried and I really felt for him.

Being one of Bey Aana's foals, A Baby Boomer Dreams of Arabian Horses - The Legacy Continues - Part 8 Storm started off in this world being taught to be distrustful of people. It had taken a long time to get him over his fears. More on Scandalous Storm Ever since the horse had returned home it was like starting over again. It was obvious that the horse didn't know he was back home yet but I knew the old Storm was in there somewhere. It was just going to take some work to get him back to that place.

I walked the horse both ways around the arena giving him a chance to see this place before I asked much of him. The whole time I flexed the horse and moved him laterally off my legs making sure he had to concentrate on me instead of these strange surroundings. He actually did pretty well with that and before long I heard that deep sigh of his and he relaxed at the poll.

With the horse now tuned in to me I decided to experiment a little bit to see what I had. I stopped flexing to put the horse on the rail and found I had a horse travelling any which way but straight. Going to the left the horse was badly dropping his shoulder to the outside even at the walk. All attempts to block it resulted in some other part squirting out a direction it didn't belong.

Getting the horse square between my legs was a huge chore. I don't recall ever struggling with this horse to get him square between my legs. That had always been the problem with Reflection, right from the start. It had always been a relief to get on Storm after working with Reflection because he tracked so square. Clearly a lot of things had changed with this horse since the last time I'd ridden him.

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

This a baby pic of Storm taken by Jeff Little.

The Ride

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