Daisy used to be a trail horse. She would go through streams, over logs, tromp through whatever came her way. Now that she has become a dressage horse, it seems that she has developed a “princess” attitude. It kind of cracks me up because she was NOT like this when I got her. She used to roll in mud and come in with caked dredlocks in her mane and mud coated legs up to her knees. That isn’t the case anymore-which is good, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes it’s just funny.
Today I got to the stable and Daisy was outside with the girls in her good-sized pasture. There are 3 girls that go out together and one of the, Kieda, is pretty much the alpha mare. The pasture is soaked right now because we had rain the past few days. The mud is deep and the hoofprints are all filled with water, so you get a good idea of how muddy it is out there right now. I needed to get Daisy to take some aspirin and come in, so I went out there with a scoop of aspirin in my hand and called her. She called back then started up towards the gate from the way-far back of the pasture. Kieda stopped her-she walked right in Daisy’s way and Daisy just stopped. I called again and Kieda got in the way again. I figured that this was not going to work so I opened the gate and walked along the very edge of the pasture to get to where Daisy was. The electric fence runs right there, so the horses don’t usually walk all the way next to the fence and it was a little drier than the rest of the pasture. I carefully made my way to the middle of the pasture and edged my way over to Daisy, who just happened to have stopped up on a bit of a ridge where the ground was raised slightly and wasn’t quite so muddy. Kieda moved in and wanted whatever I had because she was sure it must be good if Daisy’s mom was going to come all the way out there in the mud to give it to her. I shooed her away and gave Daisy the aspirin. Of course Daisy won’t eat it. Kieda moved in again and I shooed her away again. I tried feeding it to Daisy once more, who turned her nose to it like it was poison for the second time. Fine, I figured-I’ll just get her to come up to the gate and we’ll feed this to her in her stall. “Come on, Daisy,” I said and grabbed her halter. I let go and Daisy and I started working our way back up. I got to the dry area by the electric fence again, and here comes Daisy. She takes her head and neck and SHOVES me over away from them fence. SHE wanted to walk on the dry part. Well, since I’m not going to win, I let her have the dry area and I walked back up through the ankle-deep mud in my show boots. (I know-don’t ask me why I went out there in my nice boots. Guess I didn’t figure she was such a priss)
We went in, gave her the aspirin (which I had to hollow out a pear and hide inside to give to her), we waited about a half hour, then I massaged her for about 15 minutes (which she loved), then we went for a ride and we had a pretty good time. We cantered in her good direction and it was slow and balanced, so I was excited about that. During our ride, I decided to take of my coat. I’ve done this a million times before with no problem, but this time it spooked another horse. I gave my coat to Diane to put down-she laid it on the edge of the arena. Daisy was freaked. She wouldn’t go near that coat. It wasn’t there before and it shouldn’t be there now, so she won’t approach it. We eventually get her to go past it without a fight and all was well. Aside from that, it was a good ride (by the way, the coat wasn’t scary anymore once I got off-I was actually able to put it right in her face and she didn’t even flinch). Hope tomorrow goes as well! Well, minus the walking in mud and getting scared by a coat, that is.
