The scary backdoor

The footing outside is frightful, so we all huddled inside for our last drill practice of the year. The start was rough with horses bolting, bucking, rearing ... and much of the culprit was the half open backdoor.

My Q was one of the more composed of the eight horses but still had his tense “giraffe-neck” moments every time we passed the backdoor, or whenever one of the other horses would have a bolting fit. It was a tense warm-up.

One of the horses, an OTTB-turned-jumper, was particularly anxious that morning. He was literally frazzled by our antics and his sweet rider was terribly tense at being such a bother. So our fearless rider placed her attention on her with some one-on-one coaching and then she barked at the seven of us to get into formation and start trotting while following our formation leader through serpentines, circles, changes in direction on the diagonal and through the center.



Within 2 minutes all seven horses (and riders) settled and we passed by that scary backdoor hundred of times without even a glance. We even totally forgot about our frazzled OTTB who was tracking last in line and just trying to find his groove. Within 10 minutes we were all connected by an invisible string and changing from closed to open formations on command. Even Mr Frazzles.


It was awesome! What a great reminder of how the context of our surroundings fades to black once we get to work. And I mean real work. We were huffing and puffing after 10 minutes.


Q was also doing much better than last week. His bullying tendencies of pinned ears and tension towards his horsemates almost disappeared and he settled into work really fast. I also noticed that his tension increased when we tried new formations. I must be telegraphing my own tension, and he goes into self-preservation mode.

Our newest move was a teardrop turn while in nose-to-boot formation. In the turn we would also switch leaders from back to front, and switch sides from left to right or vice versa. After that it was time for some thread the needle and then our final pass at our pattern-in-process which at a closed formation working trot and included 20 meter circles (with eight horses!) at every loop of a serpentine and a ying-yang zig zag inside the formation. That was wild!


After an hour we (and the horses) were ready for our midday treats, and so we did a simultaneous abrupt turn from the wall at a working trot and halted aligned on center. Applause, laughter, congratulations aplenty. As I proceeded to dismount, Q was particularly annoyed and pinning his ears at the nearby paint sticking its neck towards us. Being one leg in the air, I didnt do much but bounced along hanging from the saddle as Q lunged for the paint. It was a surprising reaction, but one I will pay more attention to in the future.

That’s it until 2020, and with only one week left until sunny Costa Rica, Im hoping for some heavy snow to improve the trail conditions. But tomorrow’s forecast calls for rain.

Let it snow! Let it snow!

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