You cheeky so and so!

It becomes clearer and clearer that if Jazz had gone to someone with less experience, strength and sheer determintation to have my own way, that he could be real problem by now. We went out for a little hack and he threw two serious napping challenges at me. The first just because he wanted to go home, using as an excuse a sheep feeder that he has seen every time we have hacked out. He tried everything he could to go home, spinning round, backing up. He gave in after about five minutes, perhaps a bit less. Then a bit later we came across a road sign, a dumper truck and a JCB, so there was perhaps a little more excuse this time. Suffice it to say that after a certain amount of time he was cuddling up to the dumper and walking under the arm of the JCB and licking the road sign. He is a cheeky ^%$&*&%^%$ and no mistake. He’s wonderful to hack out excepting the fights, so big and solid and bouncy and comfortable.

I measured him when we got back – he’s over 16.2 in his stocking feet. He has grown over half an inch in the ten weeks he’s been here. And Zip! Well, words fail me – he is now a BIG horse. He is over 16.1 and he looks every bit like a horse heading towards three years old. I am weaning him off stud mix, he doesn’t need that rocket fuel any more!! The reason, I think, is as we guessed before – that he had not been kept in until Christmas and had been out unrugged. The clues are all there – he has cat hairs in his coat (so he'd been cold), which is longer than Jazz’s even though his mane and tail are finer. He had no shoulder rubs. At first I thought that he was just one of those horses whose shoulders didn’t rub. But they are rubbing now, and he has had a rug on with me for four weeks this Friday. I think all he needed to produce this extraordinary growth (nearly an inch in four weeks, with the substance to go with it too) was lots of good food, a good rug and a warm dry place to sleep at night.

I did some in hand work with him today, in his full tack. He halts, walks on, turns on the forehand. All very good. I put some weight into the saddle (the steps are too low to get right over, I’ll fetch a higher pair now I know he’s ready for it.) He was slightly flustered to start with but completely oblivious after half a dozen tries. He’s very sharp, but only at things that he chooses to be sharp about. Most things, like the tack, the in hand work, he couldn’t care less about. I think he just likes an excuse now and then to throw himself about a bit, snorting like a dragon. It’s his age!

We always have our feet picked out before we come out of the barn. It happens every morning and after every exercise session, so he knows the score. He allowed me to do the first one, and then ran away at the first hind one. I fetched a step, sat down, and waited until he came back, and tried again starting with the foot he had already let me do. This went on for twenty minutes. I kept telling him that he wasn’t getting out of there to be with the others until I had done his feet. I warned him that if he kept it up until twelve o'clock (half an hour away) that I would leave him in there alone while I went out to lunch! He kept on running away. Finally, he got the message, all four feet picked out with no trouble at all, and out we went ……… that’ll have been a good lesson for him to have learned :- )

Tia’s had the day off because she was so good yesterday, and also because working her was going to mean awful lot of mud-scraping first – don’t tell her I said that though, she’ll do it deliberately!!!

C