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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Me and my goofy geldings...

Phoenix has the kind of horse-face that makes you think he's about to speak.  In words.  I don't know what it is, he just looks clever.  He's abnormally expressive, I guess.

He's a GOOF.



During a lesson, I know exactly what's going on with him.  I know when he gets bored - which happens easily.  He does the 11-year-old girl lessons.  It's pretty basic stuff.  Ten minutes in, he's all eye-rolling and stumble-hooved.  That's when I have to change it up, make it more challenging, do something different, anything.  That is, without making it to hard for the rider.  So it's mostly a challenge for...me.

He has one particularly funny/ annoying habit.

He knocks things over.  He seems to believe that he gets points for putting a barrel on the ground.

I might never be able to take this horse to a show.

He'll be going past the little orange pylon set there to mark the corner of the pattern, slow down to a stop, and ever so gently set one hoof on top of it and  - toppled.  The blue barrels are his favourite.  He'll actually lean in until he's close enough to get a knee into it.

He's not a klutz.   Those same little orange pylons will stay up if the rider doesn't quite give him enough to room to get around it, even if he ends up going right over it.  He's capable of walking all four hooves over it without touching it.  It's like he knows.


The little girls think it's hilarious.

Me, not so much. I mean, yeah, it's okay for a laugh, but he's not supposed to be doing that!

The good thing is, I can turn it into a fun challenge.  "He thinks he's supposed to knock over the barrels, but you have to stop him from doing that!"  It's actually good if he doesn't just do everything automatically, whether they cue him correctly or not.  They have to do it right, or he'll just roll his eyes and flap his ears and walk straight into a barrel.

They still love him.

He reminds me a lot of another goofy gelding I loved.  







Is it possible they start off as normal horses and after living with me for awhile they go silly in the head???

1 comment:

Paul Tee said...

My son was using my desktop, bumping me to the laptop, which doesn't know its way around the Internet (has no library of bookmarks, and worse, no virus protection). So I googled "hickchic" and got a truckload of hits ... but you led off the parade. There were lots, some close, some near hits. Scanning down the list I came upon "hickchicthinks". Whoa! According to self admission, my "hickchic" doesn't think (she intuits), so it couldn't be the same person. Curious, I clicked on the link, and landed on a site.

It was hickchic alright, but get this, a retired Psych nurse who lives in Hickville, KY. She probably thinks you are sitting on the name, forcing her to think, but in her blogs she refers to herself simply as "hickchic". So, she doesn't think either!

Quoting from her bio: "Mostly I did therapy and have to say had the highest cure rate, cuz one session with me and they left saying, "Wow! I'm not as crazy as I thought, just look at my therapist!"