Yes, it was sunny and bright, and yes, it warmed up quickly enough, but the knowledge of bitter cold biting my fingers, crusting my facemask and generally making it hard to move (what with all the layers) was my big excuse for being a complete jerk to my charges yesterday.
The first horse is always the worst. You trek to your first outfit, and if they aren’t awaiting you with horse a-bridled, you stand there and wait while your hands get cold. Trevor Tice told me the other day that, while waiting for the final buckle to be buckled, the trainer asked him;
“Would you grab me that tongue tie”*
“Where is it?”
“In the water bucket.”To which he replied, confidently; “I don’t think so.”
Who, in temperatures of 15 or less (farenheit), would touch their nice, dry glove to a piece of flannel soaking in a bucket, and then squeeze the water out of it? Or even remove their glove to do the same with a bare hand, just prior to heading out for a 20 mph ride into 10 mph winds?It’s f***ing cold out there!
So where was I? Oh, yeah….the first horse is the one where you freeze your hands. I have managed to cut down the pain level tremendously using mineral packet hand warmers and sewing fleece to the outsides of the fingers on my gloves, but it still hurts. I was lucky in that my first gig is for a trainer who also rides, and knows what it feels like. So I get an easy jogger. But the second one was a complete nut. First day back to the track after at least four days. It was a mistake to raise my irons.
Here’s one of my pet mantras: If a horse tosses its head a lot in attempt to shed your control (evading the pressure of the bit) take that bridle, take the reins apart and tie them to the girth on either side for long enough each day to accustom the beast to keeping its head DOWN. ANd I say "mantra" because it works like a mantra to produce peace and harmony between rider and horse, as God intended.
I mean in the stall; preferably at a time when the horse is relaxed, such as after exercise and feeding, when it’s ready for a snooze. Sensitive horses have to be accustomed to the pressure gradually, so you don’t do it all in one session.
The first time you place it on the horse so they can just feel the equipment. The next time, shorten it an inch or so and let them wear it for 20 minutes. Each time you shorten it, over a period of a week or however long it takes, you let the horse wear it until they quit fighting it and bow their neck.
You really don’t want the horse to carry its head behind the perpendicular, but you often must adjust the tension so that it is so in this phase. The whole idea is that a horse who doesn’t carry its head well to begin with needs to stretch the muscles on the crest of the neck, which it will not do without your influence.
Once the horse is comfortable with the equipment and no longer fights it, you can stop the training and enjoy the results; 9 times out of ten, the horse will carry it’s head on the perpendicular and not get behind the bit.
You won’t break the horse’s spirit. It’s not fighting you; it’s fighting itself. It will stop fighting in time. Then, when you need that control to guide and direct, you have it. At worst, the horse will learn to pull on you harder, rather than bean you in the middle of a gallop. And at best, when the chips are down and you need to be able to steer away from a spill in a race or a lose horse in the morning, you’ll get instant cooperation.
There’s something about not only being safer from a flying head; it’s the horse’s attitude. If the horse chooses to no longer evade the bit, it also chooses to make your guiding hand the authority. It is as if placing the horse’s head in an attitude of submission (DOWN) places its attitude in submission. Horses need a leader, just like dogs. When you’re not the pack leader, or the herd leader in this case, it’s much more difficult to accomplish anything, and much more dangerous as well.
Of course some horses will make a fool of me on this idea, but I will insist here that the exceptions prove the rule.
Getting back to my topic, I had a very frustrating experience with my second horse. I’m a small person; It’s fucking cold; the horses are full of vinegar; I don’t want to be tossed onto the frozen ground on my head, with my knees hyper-extended by a beast who wants to show me a better idea than my own. With her ears cocked forward, my filly was springing everywhere like a cricket and paying no mind to me whatsoever.
Every time I took hold of her mouth, she would slow down and try to back away from the pressure. If I kicked her into the bit, she’d bounce forward on rigid knees and throw her head once again. And there’s nothing to be done about it out there; you can only fix this in the breaking pen (or the stall, by tying that head to its chest!)I couldn’t have been happier that the trainer told me to let her gallop down the lane a bit. It made both of us happier, but that only lasted until we turned to jog home. Evidently not yet spent of excesses, she shied and bolted this-away and that all the way to the gap. I couldn’t wait to get off.
The third horse would have been alright if the girth and stirrups weren’t so useless. The stirrup leathers had too few adjustment holes, and had to be knotted. The girth was bereft of any stretch in the elastic, and couldn’t be adjusted to anything that translates to snug unless it cuts him in half. Add to that the fact that I was making all of the fixes on the fly, while the horse pranced all the way to the track, bounce, bounce, bounce…..I had to keep straightening him up while I was filling my hands with adjustments.
I invariably lose my patience when this happens, especially when everything slides through the frictionless grip of my gloves. So in departing from the bitterly cold half of the morning, I’d have to say I had started off badly and have to hope my animules can forgive me for the rough handling. Even the folks around me were saying “Liz, the pavement is too slippery here..”
It never pays to be angry; you have to be firm, but when you add anger you cause more enthusiastic resistance, and that can get you hurt.Later I was scheduled to breeze a horse, but something seemed wrong underneath, and he couldn’t go straight. I never let him stretch his legs. Not knowing the beast, I didn’t trust him to not run through the outside fence. We pulled up about 50 feet past the wire. I was dripping sweat. My situation hadn’t been helped by a loose horse out on the track, running around lost and without a bridle or halter (there are enough horror stories to go around about people hitting head on.)
When you’re on the rail watching (the trainer's point of view) you have to wonder what all of us idiots are doing out there sometimes, as often it’s not what we were directed to do. But, if you didn’t know that the horse would lug out; that he would steel his mouth against the bit; that you can sometimes feel like a runaway bus on a mountain ridge, plans can change a great deal on execution. It can be hard for people on the rail to see what we riders feel from in the saddle, so often we're blamed for not doing what we're told to do when we're actually trying to protect the horse or ourselves from injury.
…..But I should have, or could have just said; “I can’t wait till it warms up.” Nobody can. We’re all sick of the cold and the extra clothes and the hard track and the frozen mud. But the long version is (hopefully) more entertaining.
*A ‘tongue tie’ is a strip of flannel or other fabric roughly 12 inches long, that is wrapped in a single loop around the horse’s tongue and secured beneath the chin. Tongue ties are used to prevent the horse from pulling its tongue behind the bit. There’s more than one reason for this, but it doesn’t bear discussing right now.
