What a change a little bit of equipment can make with a horse!  For the last 2 ½ months we have been riding Tercel with the blinkers, and riding Tercel has changed from a heart-stopping 30 minutes of stress to a sleep-inducing 30 minutes of more or less boredom.  Believe me, right now I prefer the boring rides!  Tercel was not ridden regularly during this time, and for three weeks he was not ridden at all, so this welcome boredom was not caused by working Tercel hard.

When I had my lesson on Wednesday the dark clouds were massing to the North and the lighter clouds overhead were doing brief spates of drizzle.  Since it has been getting warmer Debbie decided it was time to change my lesson to 8:00 AM.  Of course the first 8:00 AM morning was quite cool with a brisk breeze, and I put a long sleeve shirt over my summer technical fabric shirt just so I would not get too cold.  Tercel was a little anxious about his ears, but by going slow and murmuring loving words I succeeded in grooming his ears and putting on his poll cap and ear bonnet.  This week I remembered to put his Dy’on blinkers on my bridle.  Debbie still had to correct Tercel when he kept on trying to barge ahead of her on the way to the riding ring, these blinkers do not cure everything!

Because of the breeze Tercel was not exactly “calm” for the first part of my lesson.  There were no “starts” or big flinches, but when he notice something in front of him his head would come up and I could feel his forehand starting to elevate.  So I stopped him, counted to ten as he looked intently at everything, and I spent most of the ride doing wide curves around the jumps, changing directions frequently.  Tercel gave me good contact most of the time, changing the curve of his body as I lengthened his outside rein, keeping an even speed throughout the turns.  Gradually I introduced smaller, tighter curves, concentrating on keeping the same timing of hoof beats throughout the turns.  I was even brave enough to ride him past the scary judge’s stand; while he insisted on walking several feet to the inside of the fence and kept himself on “high alert” he did not spook at anything, and he relaxed as I went back to our winding path around the jumps.

Then we started to work on learning the aids, or rather my particular aids, for the halt.  The first time was not particularly impressive; I had to go up the escalation of the aids to the freezing of my seat.  The next time he started slowing down when I did the alternate twitching of my little fingers though I had to go up to using both hands at the same time to get the halt.  Then, as a change of pace, I worked on getting Tercel to extend the stride of his walk a little bit.  Now Tercel does have a fast walk, Debbie calls it his “marching walk”, with his head up looking for ANY excuse to spook.  During his marching walk Tercel lengthens his stride a little bit, but most of his increased speed comes from moving his legs quicker and pushing off with his legs more forcefully.  My goal right now for Tercel is to get a faster walk just by extending his stride, keeping his head down and calmly accepting contact without raising his head too much.  Each time he did this I stopped my aids except to keep my seat moving with his back, counted to ten and then praised him for figuring out how to respond correctly to my aids.

Around this time Debbie remarked that Tercel had his “sleepy eyes” again.  Good.  For most of his life Tercel has found being ridden to be an exercise fraught with anxiety, full of excitement, and an excellent opportunity to show the world just how unhappy and miserable he was.  He had no reluctance to get down to it with his rider, and the more he reacted to stuff in his environment the more reactive he became.  All during these rides Tercel, his rider, and Debbie as a riding teacher did not get bored.  It may not have been a thrill a minute but it was random, unexpected thrills that immediately escalated into somewhat vehement “discussions” about the proper behavior of a riding horse.  Riding Tercel used to be a rather exciting workout, and while progress could be made with Tercel in between the spooks and startles it was rather inconsistent.

Now, while I would not consider riding Tercel to be boring per se, the spooks and startles have ended, at least at the walk.  While Tercel appreciates me letting him take a good long look at the first thing that rivets his attention, after I slowly count to ten out loud he seems to decide that my reactions to this are rather boring and he’d rather be doing something else.  Please understand me here, I am not talking about the soul destroying boredom of things that never change (the endless trudge around the outside of the ring,) I am talking about the ennui that comes to the adrenaline junkie when the drama ends.  Of course it has helped that I ride him in a saddle that does not limit the movement of his back and shoulders, that the Micklem bridle does not irritate his head, and that the Wellep bit feels good in his mouth.  Essentially I have been trying to remove all the human caused irritations which he could use as a convenient excuse to blow up and ignore his rider.  With the blinkers I’ve removed his ability to see scary things out of the back corner of his eyes, which removed the trigger of his most spectacular meltdowns.  I am starting to find out that behind all the exciting drama that Tercel is always willing to dish out, is a horse that can appreciate a nice, calm, and totally unexciting walk.  And as Tercel walks calmly I can start teaching him my language, and Tercel is in a state that he can use some of his brain power to understand what I am telling him.  I don’t want much, I just want calmness to be Tercel’s preferred state of being.

On Friday it was rather confused at the stable.  Debbie wanted to ride Tercel when I rode Mia, and had left Tercel out in the barnyard after feeding him his grain.  She had a lesson scheduled but she was not sure if the people would make it.  Well, her students did come out and she was busy getting all three of them tacked up and forgot that she had not put Tercel out in his pasture.  Around that time Debbie’s husband was bringing some round bales out to the pastures and did not close the barnyard gate.  Tercel sauntered over to the open gate when I yelled out that a horse was going to escape, Debbie’s four year old grand-daughter came out just as Tercel walked through the open gateway, and went to stand near him but several feel away (even at 4 years old she understands basic safety around a horse.)  Debbie finally came out and caught him, brought him back into the barnyard and closed the gate.  As my son walked Mia back to the barn after my ride I saw that Tercel was happily eating a rather lush clump of grass by the little drainage ditch and I decided to see if he would let me come up to him while he was loose.  I walked slowly toward him, he lifted his head and looked at me, and I stopped moving until his put his head back down to eat.  Then I came a little closer, stopping again as his head went up.  Finally I was on one side of the tiny drainage ditch, he was on the other side where his wonderful grass was, I moved so I was not directly facing him and I reached out my hand.  After a few seconds he graciously reached out with his nose to touch my hand, and which point, quite content, I turned around a walked away.  Horses often get somewhat weirded out the first time they see me walking up to them in the pasture with my canes, I am very happy Tercel stayed in one place and let me get near him instead of running off.

Have a great ride!

Jackie Cochran