Ruffian: Having fun with tying!

November 26 2010

I played with all three horses again today. We got a lot of freezing rain last night so everything was ice. It gave me a chance to use my imagination though.  First I played with Ruffian. We made it up to the riding ring safely but it wasn't any better. So we just hung out by the fence for a bit. While we were standing there I got the idea that I should practice tying Ruffian and getting him used to that. Seeing as if we ever have to trailer him somewhere... it would be a good start.

So I looped the rope around the rail and started out by just doing some friendly game, then some extreme friendly game in zone 2,3,4, and 5. Ruffian was so calm and relaxed he was looking around but he wasn't at all RB.

Then I decided to get the little sled out that was had brought up last winter. I let Ruffian see it first and then I started moving it around, he was okay with that so the next step was to push it back and forth a little on the ground. Ruffian wasn't bothered by that so I started pulling it behind me and I walked in a big half circle around him and kept doing that for a couple times until he totally relaxed and wasn't bothered at all by it, which didn't take long.

Even though Ruffian is a LBE I wasn't as worried about him moving his feet so much as him going RBI, which he does when he is worried,  feels pressure or anything else like that. But he did extremely well the whole time.

After that I started kicking around a basketball. Ruffian was a little worried about that but he still stayed still and didn't go internal which I was happy about! He even started licking and chewing after a while and then started lowering his head and yawning! Part way through I had shortened his rope so he only had about 1ft of rope. I wanted to see what he did when he couldn't move his head as much (I started out with quite a bit of slack in the rope).

Ruffian didn't move his feet once through out the whole session. We ended when he was relaxed, calm and sleeping. I was really impressed to say the least!

We slowly worked our way down the hill, trying not to slip. We were able to make it down okay but taking a longer route. It was a lot of fun doing really small things because we couldn't move around a whole lot. It was cool!!

Naturally,
~Keri