Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Oh yeah...the "this can't possibly be my horse!" syndrome on ride day!  They morph into an entirely different creature.  LOL  My horse Bear was like that for about a year and a half...the only way I could have my normal horse back was to fall back and let everyone get ahead of us...about 10-15 minutes after the last horse got out of sight, the "old" Bear returned and we could have a lovely ride.  But let a horse pass us, or us catch up to someone, and he'd get all psycho again.  As time went on, we'd be able to ride with others toward the end of the ride.  Now, he's learned to chill (a bit) and although he's still charged up and trying to go faster, he *does* listen to me, even at the start.  But it took doing a lot of 50s by ourselves to get him to this point.  Like you said, some things *can't* be worked on at home...only at an actual ride.  Bear would be perfectly responsive in any situation I could dream up to mimic a ride...it took being at an actual ride to fry his brain., and thus to work on the issue.

 

Dawn Carrie

and Bear (mom lets me be with other horses now!  And we get to go a bit faster, too!)

 

On 10/10/07, Beth Walker <bwalker2@xxxxxxx> wrote:

I can relate to this - big time.  I'm currently trying to get my fellow to be a bit less hyper at rides.  He is perfect by himself, and just fine on trail rides with small groups.  He actually seems to recognize which horses go fast, and which go slow if he has been on a couple of rides with the same horse.  :)   Even going out on a loosen-up ride the day before Ride Day, his is usually just fine.  But Ride Day?   Rocket Time!    

 

He gets wound up, and is constantly fighting me to go faster, wigs out when other horses come up behind, and wants to jam his nose in the tail of the horse ahead if he is behind.   My problem is that he ONLY does this at rides, so it is really hard to work on it at home.  

On Oct 9, 2007, at 10:36 PM, Kathy Mayeda wrote:

I think that my horse will know the difference!  If he has too much time to think he starts trash talking at the other horses, so if we are pacing to slow it may be an issue.   If he has a job to do, like get down the trail, he's fine.

 

He'll probably throw a tantrum on the trail and be doing his lame trot.  Besides he's a grey horse that gets green slime down the butt.  If you look closely at the notepad they gave out at the AERC convention this year, that's me and my dirty behinded Beau on the second day of Cuyama years ago.  I'm sure that we would be marked down for that.  I know, I know, diarhea on an endurance horse ain't a good thing, but it hasn't slowed us down, it's just kept us from going too far.

 

I had an arena lesson on him a couple of weeks ago and my instructor asked me to use one of my other horses for lessons next time.  He was acting lame, threw a tantrum and was sulky and not wanting to go at all.  The following weekend we rode some pretty brutal trail for two days without a mis-step.

 

K.