So, after a month of careful desensitizing, he's getting really good at not flinching when something strange comes along, at standing near the scary blue plastic wall (from a Fisher-Price child's toy) that is used as a 'wing' for a jump, even at ignoring tarps that he used to panic about. I noticed that he was much more willing to go over jumps and trot poles and around strange objects. I thought he was just about ready to ride in a parade...…

As more than a few people have commented on my tack box in past weeks, I post these here for a wider audience.

I got tired of arriving at a barn only to spend 10 to 15 minutes scrounging up brushes, hoof picks, &c., so I put those in a bag.

Then I bought my own saddle, with the changeable gullet, so I wouldn't have to ride those school saddles that feel like two angle-irons welded to an old oil-drum. The changeable gullet meant I could fit any horse I was given in only a few…

Out on the trail, bushwhacking through woods too thick to walk through on foot, we come across a fallen tree, branches everywhere, and pine trees on the other side. Vinnie is behind us, following. I ask Oakley to approach so I can see if there is a way around. While I'm looking around, he keeps walking up to the tree, looks down at the trunk as if to say "oh, this up to my chest. I can't step over this... I'll have to jump..." and…

It's been just over a year since I got my horse. (Or he got me, depending on your perspective.)

I've learned more about horses in the past 12 months than I'd learned in five years of merely riding, even working through the EC Rider levels. See, there is a lot of stuff you just cannot do with someone else's horse because, well, you can't really try stuff if she's not yours, can you? Plus I met another good teacher, who had much to teach.

Well, we went out on the trail the other…

Oakley had a light July.

We aren't going anywhere for August, and probably not in Septermber, either.

We are going to concentrate on basic dressage work and  jumping skills over low jumps.

First, because he got kicked good and hard by a mare who wears…

No kidding. That's what the dressage judge wrote on our first test.

I just about choked when I read that, mostly because we had just been eliminated from show jumping portion, which actually went better than expected, but he was the antithesis of 'willing and obedient'.

The dressage scores were good -- mostly 6 and 7, with a couple of 5 - overall 58%, which isn't bad for a first effort. He's done about 60% in all his previous tests with his old owner and now I know what we have…

Way back when I was about 16, we had an night at the manège that is etched in my memory.

It was a "perfect" moment.

But it didn't start that way, it started out as a very, very imperfect evening. Mssr. Godot wanted us to passage and the horses just wouldn't. They leaned on the bits too much, some were too fast, others didn't passage so much as fade to a walk from lack of energy. And he sat in his booth overlooking the arena, calling out "Tempo! Tempo! Non, non, non!…

So, after a couple of days off, Oakley had a good session, did some light longeing, good flatwork, and it was a very pleaseant June evening...except it's March, where it didn't belong, but overall a good day’s ride. At the end of an hour, Oakley was sweating in the unseasonable heat, so I decided a good end would be a walk up the trail: not muddy, but not baked hard, either. A pleasant evening twenty-minute cool-down walk up the hill.

Nope.

Oakley started playing scared -- his…

The final straw was the day in November when he did what the Spanish School in Vienna might describe as a "levade" but which we will more accurately call a "refusal" which involved a lot of rearing and dancing about on his hindquarters.

We had set a cavaletti on its lowest setting, a couple of centimetres off the ground, as a trot-pole. Oakley went over this, albeit with some urging. Then my coach took the pink scarf that someone left behind in the arena…

Oakley would like me to think he's a very high-strung horse. Well, he is pretty lively, but he's gone to great lengths to convince me that he is too difficult to ride, so I should just leave him to munch his hay in his paddock, because every time we left the paddock, he'd find something to be frightened of. Our walk up the path to the stable, or the walk from stable to arena invariably went like this:

"Ahh! What is that frightening thing?" (It's a piece of wood in the…

Of all the horses I've ridden, Oakley is quickly proving to be the most challenging to figure out.

He is also variously frustrating, exhilarating, joyful, puzzling, embarrassing, irritating, exhausting, satisfying, and a dozen other feelings I cannot yet name. He is a real test of my patience and just beyond the limit of my skill and knowledge. There is only so much one can learn from reading and a lot of what gets written explains exactly what to do, but almost inevitably leaves out…

Before I got Oakley, I'd never actually loaded a horse on a trailer myself. I've led horses up to someone who took them onto the trailer, I've seen it done a dozen times, but never done it myself. So, I figured, since he's going to have to go to shows, therefore I'd better learn how to put him on board and get him there safely, in comfort.

The first thing I learned was how not to do it.

Under instruction from his previous owner, we led him to the trailer. I climbed up…

I first decided I wanted a horse in 1974. Life circumstances changed and changed back until I was seriously getting ready to find one next year.

Opportunity knocked in early July. I answered, and on 1 August 2011, became the human half of a new partnership with a seven-year old bay gelding, a 16.2 HH Quarter-horse named Oakley Pine.

Pithy phrases like 'seize the day' and 'when opportunity knocks, answer the door' don't mention the corollary about needing antacids to…