It has been an exciting week riding.

Debbie has a new mare at her barn, a piebald (black and white pinto) Tennessee Walking horse mare named Quizzy.  Since Quizzy still has hind shoes on, with trailers, Debbie does not want to turn her out in the mare pasture yet, but has been turning her out in the area around the riding rings to run around.  The mare pasture is right next to this turn out area, and Mia, lonely and friendless since her best friend was sold, quickly became best friends forever with her.  And Mia and Quizzy have been running madly around and yelling out to each other whenever they can’t see each other ever since they met.  True friendship/love at first sight.  This was why Mia was so antsy last week, when I took her to the trail she could no longer see Quizzy and she did not calm down until she could see her new friend.

When I got to the stable Debbie warned me that Mia was less sound, Debbie had ridden her bare-back with a halter to get another horse from the pasture and noticed that something was off.  Joe, my son, went out to get Mia and he told me that Mia was not her normal placid self.  We got Mia into the wash stall cross ties and Mia started frantically hollering her head off, big open mouth deep neighs, and Quizzy, nearby but out of sight was neighing back.  Mia WOULD NOT STAND STILL!  I managed to do her anti-fungal treatment with the slicker brush but it was sort of hairy, and then I looked at her and realized that Mia was in no way listening to any human since her new friend was yelling her head off.  I told Joe to put her back out, that she was too dangerous right then for me to rasp her toes down and I did not want to put up with her shenanigans while riding.  As Joe took her out Debbie told me she wanted to work both mares together in the ring so Joe put Mia back in the cross ties and we waited for Debbie to get Quizzy into the neighboring wash stall.  I trust Debbie, if she thinks I can handle something she is right, and of course she was right that this was something we should deal with.  Pre RS-tor I would have been very scared with the idea of riding Mia in that state, mainly because the first adult mare I owned decades ago was obviously hormonal (and I and the barn owner were ignorant about it) so I have had years of experience with the somewhat hysterical states these mares can get into.  At least with Debbie riding Quizzy I did not have to worry about her rider losing control or letting the mare run wild.   

When Quizzy appeared Mia got even more excited, trying to move forward out of the cross ties so she could touch noses with her friend.  Finally I got Mia backed up enough so she could see her friend in the next wash stall and Mia started calming down and keeping her feet still.  Since her feet were still I rasped her toes, Joe groomed and saddled her and we waited for Debbie to get Quizzy groomed and tacked up.  Since both mares were still agitated Debbie started them on some Regumate (sp?) and said she would give it to both of the mares for 5 days, hoping to cycle them out of their mania.  Then I asked Debbie to lead Quizzy out first so my son would not have as much trouble leading Mia.  We got in the ring and we both mounted up with Debbie and Quizzy a good 30 feet away from Mia and we stood for a minute.  Then Quizzy “showed” heat, straddling her hind legs, spurting urine out and winking her vulva.  Mia swelled up, started flehming, arched her neck and started snorting.  When I asked for contact she curled her head to her chest, started prancing in place, and then started moving toward her friend and new love.  Before her hoof hit the ground I had her in a turn away from Quizzy and sent her off in the opposite direction at a walk, with full contact.  Luckily I had experience riding both a stallion and a hormonal mare, and  I know that when a horse is excited like that you DO NOT want that first step toward the object of attention to succeed, because by the second foot-fall the rider often has lost all control.  I also know that it is a bad idea to get an excited horse to switch its weight to its hind end so I turned her with a low and wide opening rein with help from my leg.  Debbie and I then started working our mares, keeping them well apart at first.  For ten minutes I rode Mia like she was a stallion with my full attention on this usually placid mare. I did not let her get away with anything.  I had Mia on FULL contact which she actually accepted, this is a mare who always insists on the lightest contact possible.

Debbie is helping Quizzy’s owner retrain her mare from being a “racking” horse to being a flat-shod TWH pleasure competitor.  Down here the shows sometimes have classes for the racking horses of any breed, not just American Saddlebreds, and in these racking classes the horses just walk and rack.  For the Walking Horse shows she needs to have a slow walk, a flat-footed walk, a running walk, a faster running walk, and a regular canter.  Poor Quizzy had been whipped by her earlier ‘racking horse” trainer whenever she broke into a canter, whipped hard with a dressage whip.  Debbie now has to convince the mare that she can canter without being punished.  Quizzy is so pretty when she puts her head up and goes into the running walk, with a really nice even 4-beat “pitter-patter”, and Debbie experimented with several things and finally got her to canter willingly.  Quizzy came up with the pacey canter, moving one lateral, then rapidly the second lateral, then the suspension, just like the “canter” my Paso Fino mare used to give me.  Every few strides Quizzy did a proper canter stride, then she slipped back into the pacey canter.  In between Debbie worked on her walk and running walk.  Since Quizzy was moving faster than Mia Debbie had to pass us frequently, and I would take Mia to the fence and stop her and I would not let her move until I told her she could.  After a while I could relax and ride Mia some on sagging reins but I did not dare ride her on the buckle.

Through my decades of riding and horse ownership I have found that horses that have turn-out with other horses have a totally separate life from the time that we spend with them.  We humans may be nice and we might provide entertainment, but the TRULY IMPORTANT relationships are those with other horses.  Horses can get as hung up on these relationships as any human teenager.  When “love” enters the relationship things can get hairy for the rider.  One time long ago my first horse, a gelding  who was then around 15, fell like a ton of bricks for a graceful and pretty black Welsh Section-B pony mare that was in his pasture a few months.  For several months I had to put up with this “love affair”, every time I rode off contact my gelding was desperately craning his head around trying to find his one true love.  Luckily for me he did not go into full stallion mode (and since he was gelded at age 5 he could have) and I learned a lot about keeping my attention on my horse.

But I never had a mare, a thirty year old mare at that, go into a full stallion mode.  This just goes to show that hormones can wipe out training and gentling, and all of a sudden they can cause a previously quiet and reliable riding horse to lose it completely.  It does not matter what type of friendship and relationship you have with your horse, once those hormones start flowing you are handling a DIFFERENT horse.  The horse’s rider/handler HAS TO BE calm and firm, if you are not calm the horse will get even more excited and unmanageable, and you have to be firm so that the horse will eventually remember their training and calm down and obey you.  These horses are trainable, people train stallions and hormonal mares to ride all the time, but the rider always has to be aware of what the horse is doing and be ready to intervene at the first sign that the hormones are taking over.  The rider also has to be sure not to cause the horse great unrelenting pain with the hands or legs because pain just gets the horse more excited and unmanageable.  Yes, you may have to give the horse a good whack or two, but it has to be a good whack at the right time and intensity.  Fortunately neither Debbie nor I had to give our mares whacks.

Of course if I had been riding a stallion my ride would not have been as peaceful, though I probably would have done pretty much the same things.  It just may have taken longer to convince the stallion that I was in control. 

Near the end of our ride Molly, the mother of the little girl who owns Mick, the Arab gelding I ride, came out to ask Debbie something.  Since Molly long ago had started riding in the Saddle Seat Debbie asked her if she wanted to try Quizzy out.  I was tired and just walked Mia around (keeping my full attention on her) while Molly tried out Quizzy’s running walk.  Then we both went to the gate and ended up standing pretty near to each other and Mia started up her stallion routine again.  I just turned her away and stood until Debbie came up to hold her as I got off.

As we walked back to the barn Debbie jokingly asked how I liked my stallion ride.  I just said it was a good thing that I had experience riding a stallion so I knew what to do.

When we got back to the wash stalls the Arab gelding I ride, Mick, was being saddled and when Quizzy was put into the wash stall next to him he started giving her evil looks.  Mick’s stall window looks out into the small “play pen” that Quizzy uses to get outside, and apparently Quizzy had been nasty and rude to him.  So now I am riding two Arabs at Debbie’s stable, and one, Mia, is head over heels in love with Quizzy and the other, Mick, can’t stand the sight of Quizzy.

Ah, life with horses.

I have noticed that since I started using the RS-tor I have become a LOT bolder in my riding.  I no longer worry as much about losing my seat, therefore I am much more willing to get “down” on the horse if I need to.  My greater confidence really helps, mainly because I do not panic when something starts to go wrong, I know I can ride it out, and the horses realize that they cannot spook me.  I can get as firm as I need to with the horse, but, of course, I make sure that my firmness NEVER crosses the line to unfeeling abuse.  It can be a fine line the difference between firmness and abuse.  The horses respect firmness, but they get really, really, really resentful if they think I am being abusive.  Then I apologize and we work out a compromise that works somewhat for both of us.

Have a great ride!

Jackie Cochran