Ace
I rode Ace for the first time on Saturday. We had checked the soreness in his back before I went to Hawaii. He didn’t seem to have any except up by his withers. Not only have I been worried about the soreness I’m a little intimidated by his size. I’ve never ridden a horse this big. It’s a long way to the ground.
Even when I’m leading him, he has been a little spooky. He’ll see something, especially if it moves, and he jumps. The other day I was taking him to the arena while I mucked out his pen and my Jeep was between there and the barn. When he could see it, he snorted and moved into me.
Smokey Photo by Richard Ohmart
I’ve had a couple of horses who were like this. Smokey, who I had in high school, would go around an arena 13 times and on the 14th would see something and spook. Zandy, who was my last amateur horse, was fine when we were going forward in a jump course but would spook sometimes in the circle either before or after the course. My thoughts are that it’s a vision problem.
Horses sometimes see with both eyes as we do, and they see with each eye independently. I think that when an object goes from that spot where they are seeing it binocularly to seeing with a single eye it may jump at them. Why some horses are more anxious about this I’m not sure.
Zandy photo by J Bar D Studio
We had a group riding Saturday morning and decided to go to the arena first. I had been told that it might be good to lunge Ace before I got on him and before I got on Vanessa asked if I wanted to. No, let’s see how he does. He seemed sluggish in the arena and didn’t want to rein very well so we changed bits. That helped a little.
Then when we were all tired of the arena riding, we went across a field. I was a little worried about him going between the trailer and implement to get to the field, but he breezed right through that. He relaxed and was moving out nicely with the other horses. Then he had to stop and pee and the other horses went on. I was ready for him to trot to catch up with them. Instead, he got his legs under him, and crow hopped a bit. That took me by surprise. I was able to compose him, and we moved on as the other horses waited for us.
When we decided that we had gone far enough we turned around. Shortly after that Ace kicked out and I heard one of the dog’s yelp. He’d kicked him. Again, I was slightly unseated. Then he saw the oil rig that was pumping and was on the muscle again. This time he was a little harder to calm down, so Vanessa came to my rescue. Then we came to the cows, and he got excited again and again we calmed him. Just before we got back to the barn, he caught sight of the wind turbine. At this point I’d had enough; I don’t like to ride fully back to the barn, so I dismounted and walked him back.
I believe he will be a good horse for me. He’s very kind. I do need to work on desensitizing him to distractions. We both need to work on trust. And I look forward to it.
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