Horse-eating goats

Jazz's hacking has definitely improved a whole bunch. He is still spooky from time to time but the determined efforts to go home have completely disappeared. Today we met a herd of horse-eating goats who were spooked by a hiker. (We were out on the road and they were in a field, but he knew that they were a particular breed of goat that only eat horse :-) He whipped round and ran for it - but only one stride and then he was easy to stop and to take past them. He was on "heightened response" status for a few minutes then and did another whip-round at the sight of a biker's helmet appearing from a dip in the road ahead. But he stopped of his own accord this time, and then turned and faced it. Once he realised it was a whole bike and a rider, he was fine :-)


Tuesday is none too soon for him to be scoped. He has deteriorated rapidly, to the point where I am wondering whether it is possible that both sides of his vocal cords are going paralysed. He is unable to trot comfortably now on anything more than a slight incline. While he is fit and apparently very healthy from his appearance, he certainly now is in no doubt of needing some help to breath better. I'm quite glad about that in one way, because I wouldn't have wanted to put him through a risky general anaesthetic and an operation where he will have a hole cut right through his throat. But there seems little doubt now that he isn't going to manage much of a life without it.


I rode Zip on the arena. He was "unenthusiastic", I think it's fair to say. I had to send him on to get any suspesion in the trot or freedom through the back. I don't normally run horses around faster than they want to go naturally, in fact I'm towards the other end, slowing everything down. Slowing Jazz down works to increase the activity, but with Zip he has an ability to shrink his paces to something quite "ordinary". If you didn't know him you'd probably think it was fine, but I knew it wasn't right. I tried bends first, and nothing was changing, so I sent him out faster, and his back freed off and down came his head and neck and he started working forwards. I stopped after half a circuit of that on each rein and practiced some halts. He is really exceptional for a 3 year old - you would expect him to fidget and/or explode, but he doesn't. We stopped then.

I forgot to tell you that the other day I was riding Zip and he stopped going forwards and was reluctant to go on again. Without thinking, I gave him the kind of Pony Club kick that I would give Jazz in the same situation. Now that's not something I'd recommend on a newly backed 3 year old. But what did he do? Walk on, sighing deeply that life was so unfair :-) !

C