So, Cooper’s great. He’s built well, he’s smart, he’s forgiving, he’s sweet on the ground, he doesn’t tend to spook very much, the list goes on. I know everyone can wax poetic about their horse, but I really do feel like I lucked out with him. For a three-year-old (well, almost four), he’s remarkably focused, and the last month and a half has been a great exercise for him in learning to channel his energy after a week off, since I can only ride on the weekends right now. He’s steadily figuring out that when the saddle goes on his back, it doesn’t matter how much pent-up energy he has – we’ll keep walking until he lets out that big sigh and relaxes, and only then does he get to go any faster (so, yes, I do spend roughly 30 minutes of my ride doing nothing more than walking, on average).
With all that being said, though, there’s one thing that he struggles with more than anything else under saddle. That thing is, quite simply, being outside.
We don’t have an outdoor at our barn. This isn’t a huge deal to me – I don’t need a fence around me to ride, Ice couldn’t care less when I take him out there whether it’s to flat him or school over fences, and I’m also of the personal opinion (like the eventer that I am) that no matter your discipline, every person and every horse should be capable of riding on grass outside of an arena. You never know where you’ll be or what footing you”ll be on, so better that everyone is just comfortable with it to begin with (and it’s also just fun to ride out in a big field when the weather is nice and I highly recommend it if you’ve never given it a try).
With Cooper, though… outside is a challenge. When he came home last year, he was having stifle issues, so all I did for a month was hand-walk him, and then once I had him going under saddle, we stayed in the indoor for the most part. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to learn how to go outside, it just seemed like an unnecessary variable on top of learning how to differentiate between speed and lateral cues, how to navigate poles, how to turn off of my seat, how to accept contact, etc. I’d throw in a lap or two around the big field that we ride in as a cool down (you know, once I tired him out), but that was about it for him when it came to outdoor exposure, especially once the weather started to turn and winter (aka mud) set in.
Being outside is something that he has to learn to be comfortable with, though, since the goal is for him to become my event horse (I’d wager that cross country would be a bit difficult on a horse that isn’t comfortable outside), so when I got to the barn today and saw that the truck was parked in the indoor for the purposes of unloading hay, I figured hey, why not. I didn’t really feel like riding around it, even though Cooper is totally fine with that, so outside it was. Everything froze solid on Friday and hasn’t completely melted yet even though temperatures have been a bit above freezing, so the field was a little soft but, with the exception of a couple areas that tend to be a little marshy, totally rideable.
He was dead quiet when I brought him in from turnout, courtesy of the fact that I rode him yesterday, so I wasn’t too worried about there being a ton of pony antics today, but one can never be entirely sure what’s going to happen with a three-year-old. I tacked him up (he still has Thoughts™ about wearing fetlock boots since he’s only worn them a couple of times) and took him into the indoor to get on, and after a couple times over some poles (he forgets how his feet work for a minute when I put on the aforementioned fetlock boots because they are a Big Deal™ to his little brain and poles seem to help him remember), we headed outside.
It’s not often that he makes me feel like I’m riding a fire-breathing dragon, but he almost inevitably does when we go outside and today was no different. I have three goals in mind every time we walk out that door and into the field and that is directly related to goal number one: teach him that just because we’re outside, it doesn’t mean that anything exciting is happening or that he gets to completely take his mind off of work. Goal number two is getting him to find his balance (the field that we ride in is slightly sloped) and consequently learn how to regulate his own speed on changing terrain, and goal number three is not letting him win when he has baby horse tantrums (remember how I said he feels like a fire-breathing dragon outdoors?).
I’ll reiterate: he’s three. He’s three and, while I would feel this way about any horse regardless of age, I really don’t want to have to get into fights with him. I’ve ridden a horse who had been beaten for not doing what a prior owner wanted, and I know what the consequences of that are and what kind of horse they create. I don’t want him to learn that he can get away with things or get out of doing things just because he has his own ideas about what he wants, but I don’t want to get into fights with him either. This is a tricky line with him because, while he’s usually a very good sport, sometimes (like today) he likes to remind me of the fact that he has both Cormorant and Storm Cat in his pedigree and he will do what he wants even if it’s the exact opposite of what I’m asking, thank you very much.
Combine this with the fact that I don’t want to fight with him (I carry a dressage whip when we’re doing lateral work or if he’s refusing to take his butt along with him on circles, but that’s it, and you won’t catch me beating any horse even when I do have it in hand) and you get exactly what happened this afternoon – me turning his head left and putting my right leg on while we leg-yielded sideways down the hill because he wanted to go right so that he could go toward the pastures where all of his friends were and I wanted to go the other way. We made it about halfway down the length of the field (and it is a big field) and nearly went into a gopher hole before he figured out that I wasn’t going to give in and let him go the way that he wanted, and then he turned left and we went back to just casually walking along. He tried it again the next time around, I did the same thing, and that was the last time he tried it the whole ride.
We were out there for about 50 minutes today and probably spent 45 of them at the walk. He’s not balanced enough out there to trot downhill yet, and I knew that all of this was going to be psychologically exhausting enough for him without introducing speed into the equation (and again, he’s three, so I’m not trying to kill him with physical work so much as give him things to think about), so we only trotted uphill and along the flat part of the field a few times. He felt that the appropriate response to one of those times would be to squeal and try to throw in a few bucks, so what did we do? We went right back to the walk until he settled, and then we trotted again. He tried to take off into the canter a couple of times so, again, we walked (oh how this pained me since I’m still waiting to get that canter under saddle and he was actually collected today, alas). It’s the same thing I did to him when he was on stall rest for a few days back in December while we waited for his infected cut to heal and I was hand-walking him, or on those days where I come out and get on after he’s had a week off. He only gets to have fun – he only gets to go faster, or be out of his stall at all, in the case of when he was on stall rest – if he behaves himself, respects my space, and listens to me.
I acknowledge that not everyone would be comfortable riding him through these sorts of things, especially in an open space on uneven terrain – the only reason why I feel comfortable with it is because, while I am out of shape, I’ve spent enough time on the lunge line and have ridden enough horses of all different types and personalities to have a pretty good seat. Combine that with the fact that I’m finally riding in a saddle that fits me and puts me in the correct position, and when he bucks, I don’t go anywhere. If he spooks, I don’t go anywhere. If he tries to rear? Well, he’s not the first horse who’s tried it with me, I know what to do if it does happen, and I’m not going anywhere.
I can afford to ride him through his baby dragon moments because I know that while the odds of him getting me out of the tack aren’t zero, they are pretty low. He can act like an idiot and I’ll just be up there going “Eh, try again.” I don’t particularly enjoy it when he’s engaging in his antics, but it’s not something that makes me have a negative reaction that he can feed off of either. I put my leg on, I give him the option to give me what I want, and as soon as he does, I leave him alone and we go right back to just going along. He’s testing boundaries and I’m not being rough with him when he does, but I am teaching him that there’s an easier option than arguing with me that we’ll both enjoy more, and he honestly seems to pick up on it pretty quickly, so here’s hoping that the trend continues and we only need a few more rides out there before he gets it in his head that life is actually more fun when he doesn’t act out.
Once we got a couple of quiet tries at the trot and didn’t have too much drama when I asked him to walk again, I let him walk around on a loose rein for a little bit and then we headed inside (and he didn’t throw his other “I don’t want to go back in the indoor because my friends are out here” tantrum this time, hallelujah). He’s getting pretty good at posing for photos (it’s not like I don’t take a ton of them), so obviously I had to snap a few, and then after a quick groom and a few treats (because I do believe in bribery), he got to go back outside with his friends for a bit before it was time for them to come in for dinner.
I’m not counting on the weather holding up well enough for us to make it out into the field many more times before things start to really warm up (in like… April), as everything around here is usually just wet and gross (I’d honestly rather have it freeze over all of the mud that we’ve been dealing with), but we’ll be heading out to a local farm for a small schooling show in a couple of weeks, which will be his first time off-property with me, so that should be a good test run to see how much it’s sunk in that I’m not going to let him get away with too many antics. I’m not expecting miracles, but there is a schooling show hosted by one of the local pony clubs at the end of May and I’d really like to be able to take him and hack him out on their cross-country course the night before the show without him losing his little pony mind in the process, so we’ll just keep working on it and see how it goes.
Spymaster Equestrian 