How interesting!
When I bought Jazz the seller gave me the name and number of the person who bought his full brother a year older. I rang her last night to compare notes. Get this! It turns out that he has only been in work for 4 of the 12 months that she has owned him because …………………………. he trashes the lorry and injures himself. He has broken the bars on the windows and bent the partitions. Does this sound familiar at all????? She can only travel him with a companion and not on his own. It’s in the genes!! It sounds like I’ve done well to get Jazz to travel alone at all!
I also summoned the courage after a bottle of wine to ring Victoria about Tetley this evening. Thankfully, she is very happy with him and says that he is well. Also that her dressage trainer thinks that he was rather wasted eventing and that he should concentrate on dressage :- ) He’s not quite sound, but as well as can be expected in the wet winter weather. She is enjoying his party piece, the piaffe, as much as I did. I am just so relieved that they are both happy together.
BIG news today is that Zippy has had a saddle on. He was so quiet to girth that I just thought, "oh, hell to it, bung a saddle on" so I stuck Tia’s saddle on his back and he didn’t even notice. I girthed it up and he couldn’t care less. I led him into the barn and did some walk/halt practice and then we went back to the stable and had it all taken off again. I think he is going to be a piece of cake to get backed, which is just what I needed after what was happening this time last year with Smartie dumping me every day.
I am deliberately unsettling Jazz when I school him at the moment by turning the others out first. Today we also had the noises of Superhubby mending all the broken stuff from yesterday – and if you’ve ever heard an angle grinder cutting stone you’ll understand how much distraction there was coming from outside! But I figure that there is no point in him doing perfect work at home if he can’t cope with the pressure of being at a show. He took quite a while to settle, and tried on and off to avoid concentrating and working, but he did do everything that I wanted. Sometimes I had to insist on every single step being correct in order to get the bend, or keep his back up, but all in all I thought it was a really good lesson for him.
Tia is MUCH better today, in fact I rode her for 10 minutes in walk to try and pump out whatever is in the hole. She mighty unimpressed with having hydrogen peroxide syringed into it but we managed in the end. She’s out in the mud poultice again today, otherwise known as a field when it isn’t quite so wet :- )
I hope you and yours are all in one piece.
C
posted by cptrayes @ 12:17 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
well what a revalation about the travelling that was. Would you have thought twice if you had known that before you got him?
If I'd known about his brother, no, I would have assumed he was a one-off. I've never heard of one horse beating out the windows in a lorry, never mind two! If I'd known Jazz was going to do the same? I think I would have possibly have carried on looking and missed the best horse I've ever been anywhere near. So I'm glad that I didnt know!
Did you tell Jazz's brother's owner how to fix the travelling situation? Maybe you will have to loan her SH for a week or two. *LOL*
When I found out how unsettled Tucker got at a show because of the musical freestyle music, I began playing the radio loudly in the barn and when I was riding. Nothing like trying to desensitize them to as much as possible when you can.
Hope Zip is as easy as Chance. It won't hurt at all to sit on him a few times now, with no intent of riding him. The more familiar he is with all of the gear and your weight the better. I'm glad to hear he seems to be nice and quiet. One Smartie in a lifetime is more than enough.
Then again, maybe you could still use your vaulting rig to teach Zip to be a vaulting horse! Can you do somersaults? *G*
I read about some of the people hurt/killed in the winds. It's so sad to hear of such tragedies.
oops that'll pay me to read things properly!! I missed the brother bit and thought it was the previous owner of Jazz...... doh!
Mandeigh I thought your question was perfectly reasonable!
Jean, yes I did, and she said they hadn't dared give their's a breast bar because they had thought it would make him worse. Interestingly she is annoyed because he is only 16 hands at nearly 6 and was quite envious when I said Jazz was already 16.2.
I am really pleased that you think it would do no harm to sit on Zip soon. I was planning to do that, but unsure how many people would support that when he is so young. I don't intend to "ride" him, just get the idea in his head that people sit on his back (one at a time :-).
C
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