7th July 2010

The race horses’ owners have been to visit and are thrilled with the changes in their horses. They can’t believe they have only been with us a week and want them to stay for longer. I am loving having four extra horses in and with a week long clinic starting next Monday we will be packed so I shall take my female donkeys home to free up some stable space. The new young horse is a poppet but was very braced through the neck when she arrived on Monday. She can tip out of balance and walk through people very easily but this is a common pattern with youngsters. Too many people label them as dominant but when you watch them on the move you can see that the weight falls through their nearside shoulder and near fore making them lean towards the handler. Whilst horses are naturally more one sided, as are we, this is exacerbated by our handling of them since we are so conditioned to leading them from the near side.

As with most youngsters she really finds it hard to turn to the right due to this pattern of bracing that has been set up from an early age. When lunged on the right with a bit in her mouth she apparently took off which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. In my opinion she isn’t ready to be lunged - she cannot maintain her balance in a straight line, let alone on a circle. Her owner is lovely and has asked us to work with her for a month so that we can teach her some coordination and self control and we will put her through the clinic next week as I think she will benefit from working in the company of other horses once she has learnt some of the basic leading exercises.

This entry was posted on 19. July 2010 at 15:34 and is filed under Sarah Fisher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.