Unstuck
Yes, Ace, I really am da boss of you.
He apparently feels the need to challenge me occassionally in an attempt to reassert his role in the relationship. What he doesn’t know is that while he may outweigh me, I will always out-think him in the end.
Wednesday we got stuck out of the blue. No matter what I did, we were standing in the middle of the arena, never taking more than a step or two and never getting back out to the rail.
I went to the barn Thursday with a good attitude, hoping that Ace would live up to my high expectations rather than down to low ones. I mounted him in the far corner, where we weren’t stuck. But as soon as we got to the other end, we were right back to where we left off on Wednesday. Very slightly disappointing, but not unexpected.
One difference that second day was that I had dug out my spurs to make it a little harder for him to keep ignoring me. He didn’t like that! I could get him to walk a few steps eventually, but steering was non-existenent and we couldn’t get out of the middle of the ring.
I stayed calm and tried to work through it for about 15 minutes. Then Tracie offered to help from the ground. She grabbed a carrot stick/whip, and got ready to wave it behind Ace when I asked him to go. That finally got his attention! She waved it behind him once and he jumped a bit and pinned his ears. Second time we almost had some forward momentum. At the third, a hard loud smack on the ground, we were off. He launched forward and broke into a trot.
And just like that we were unstuck.
I rode Ace through the middle of the ring, stopped and started in the sticky locations just to make sure we were all good, and dismissed Tracie and her services.
We worked to the right for a while and then went to change directions. And then we were stuck. I wasn’t about to start that again, so after no response to my legs I applied the spurs. Ace didn’t like that! He started backing up to show his displeasure. But I kept after him, and when we had backed up the length of the short side and had no where else to go, I gave him a good boot.
He launched forward into a trot, and we haven’t had a problem since.
Yay for you for getting his brain back on track! I knew you’d figure it out in no time. They sure can be a great big puzzle, can’t they? Makes you wish you could just peek inside their head for an hour during those “stuck” moments and figure out exactly what’s going on (if anything!) in there!
Bravo! It’s hard to be the Leader – but you must be. And he figured that out really quickly! Because he’s smart. But so are you. As you said, you always out-think him in the end.
You found his go button and hopefully he won’t get stuck again anytime soon, but if he does you know you’ll figure it out.
Hello there! Finally catching up on the really good blogs after my big move, and I wanted to say how much I enjoy yours. I like your detailed and technical information. I can learn from you!
thanks. I’m going to link to you if you don’t mind.
I hope Ace is doing better! And fyi I just gave you the zombie chicken award. I know you are not big on blog awards, but you have to love that one!