First Rides

Yesterday I spent some time with Red, Snip and Cocoa. They had not been worked since March 1. See link for "Driving Training". Previously they had 3 weeks work from wild off the range.  I spent 1 hour with each horse and did a quick review, lead, lunge, bridle, saddle, rope around butt, driving, work on whoa and bumping side with stirrup for go.  That's all I did with Cocoa as he felt like he could use another day of driving.

Snip was the first horse I rode. First I took off my coat and then unzipped my vest and zipped up the pockets. You don't want anything that can hang up on the saddle horn when you're getting bucked off.  Next I took off my knife, better safe than sorry and then took off the cell phone too, no surprises.  I was wearing my helmet, chaps and cowboy boots, the pull on type.  I never do first rides in lace up boots because they will not come off if you get hung up in the stirrup.  I hopped up and down beside him on both sides to make sure I would be able to dismount without scaring him.  Next I bent the horse around, put my foot in the stirrup and stood up and leaned over to rub the other side, first on the left and then on the right.  When you first ride a horse and you change from going left to going right that's a prime time for a horse to lose it.  I avoid this problem by mounting from both sides before I get all the way on.  I have the horse bent around so if he scoots I know which way we're going.  I bumped lightly with my inside leg and asked Snip to move.  As he moved I said eeaassyy, a word he had learned earlier meant relax as I really hoped he would. After 3 separate starts on the left of 1 or 2 steps each and  lots of deep breathing on my part we switched bend.  He was definitely more alert on the right side but handled it.  I rebent him left repeated, definitely calmer, then right, better. Finally I bent left, rocked the saddle a little so it wouldn't surprise him and dismounted. What a good boy.

I followed the same procedure with Red who handled everything about the same except for once on the right when he scared himself and trotted a couple of steps but got himself stopped without incident.  Thank goodness.  I hate it when the first spook involves 3 or 4 revolutions of the roundpen at top speed.