This morning I got a note from a friend asking if Sunny and I could meet her and her six year old Lipizzan gelding at the SCCHA Show Grounds.  It would be his first outing from his highly structured dressage barn and she thought he might need a companion on his debut.  Yikes!  This is a horse who wears shipping boots and that goofy hat-thingie when he *looks* at a trailer, and overload stimulation is when there are two horses in the arena at once.  As readers of this blog may have gathered, the Show Grounds can be a scary place for a horse.

I’m pretty sure we got asked because Sunny has a reputation for being a pretty relaxed cookie in most situations, and, even though I know that Sunny is the way she is mostly because it was baked in the cake, I seem to get a lot of the credit for her Dali Lama-esque poise.   Because of that, I felt free to give my friend a list of things to think about – and I’m posting it here if anyone else is facing a First Outing.

Here’s the context.  My friend asked us to go with her and her gelding, Vincent, to the Showgrounds.  We could either meet them there or go together in her straightload trailer, and Sunny has never been in a straightload. Her plan was stay on the ground with him and just walk him around.

Here’s my response (slightly edited):

Deciding whether to

1. do the trailering with a companion horse or
2. have him ride alone and meet another horse at the destination

is a strategic issue I thought about before I started getting Sunny out and about. I took Sunny just about everywhere alone for quite awhile, just so she could learn that there might be friends (and life) on the other end of the trailer ride, even if she had go alone. Also, I’ve seen lots of horses who won’t load unless there’s another horse in the trailer, and I didn’t want her to get the idea that she could be one of those.

And I think trailering together might be a tactical error since Sunny’s never been in a straight load. It would be bad if *she* pitched a fit about getting in with Vincent watching!  Not that I think she will, but first impressions just never seem to go away with horses, and I’d hate to start Vincent’s traveling career with the image of Sunny being stubborn.

Here are some other things to take into consideration:

1.  Sunny and I should be there when you arrive, so when Vincent steps out of the trailer, he sees a familiar face.

2.  When you get there, I suspect that Vincent will be fired up, at least that’s what happened with Sunny.   One way to address this would be to take a quick tour and go home, thus demonstrating that trailer rides ultimately return him home.

3.  Or you could settle in for the afternoon, demonstrating that anywhere you are is (a) safe and (b) it’s his responsibility to settle down and take care of himself, which is what I did with Sunny.

When I took Sunny, before I got her from the trailer, I set up one of the camping paddocks with hay and water. When I pulled her out, I took her on a circuit of the campground, then returned to the paddock where she could eat and not worry about a barrage of new things.  Then I did it again.  And again.  Etc.  I took a book and a lawn chair and sat with her and read while she ate.  She wasn’t completely calm by the time we left several hours later, but she was well fed, able to cope, and she knew that the paddock was her safe place.

4.  Once you figure out what approach you’re going to take and you’re at the Show Grounds,  be prepared to leave any time.  You should expect him to get a little more nervous while he’s making his first couple of tours of the grounds, but if he continues to get more worried, even after you’ve given him some time, you need to get out of Dodge before he gets really scared, both to spare him the anxiety and to ensure the trailer loading will take place while he’s still capable of concentrating.

And if he’s settled down and hit some zen zone of relaxation, be ready to conclude that it’s not going to get better than that, and leave on a high note.

5.  And on the topic of leaving, make sure that Vincent is as good at trailer loading as you can get him, and that you know what to do if he gets stubborn.  I don’t know about other horses, but Sunny is usually willing to climb into the trailer at our barn, but is frequently really *unwilling* to get in the trailer to come home; somehow she hasn’t made the connection that, if she got somewhere in a trailer, she’s going to have to get home in the trailer, too.

On our first or second outing, I couldn’t get Sunny into the trailer. I used all my skills, and tried all my tricks, and got nowhere. I finally called my friend JoAnne, who worked with us before Sunny was started under saddle, and she came from the beach in her sun dress over her bikini, donned her dressage boots, and loaded Sunny in about 39 seconds.  I will treasure forever the pictures of Jo in her tall boots, lacy dress, and dressage whip.  And I’ll also remember how badly I felt about having to call her – so before Sunny and I went out again, we spent enough time working on loading so Sunny stepped in first and thought about it later.

6.  Have a bunch of things you can do on-line, with or without a round pen. The round pen and arena might be far from where you’re starting, so you need to have a plan on how to keep/get his mind in his body when you’re moving him, as well as what you might do in the arena or round pen.  Try to find obstacles to step over and around, so he has to think about how to move his feet.  I guess most importantly, have some skills on the ground so, particularly the Get-Off-Me! command.

7.  Be prepared for behavior you haven’t seen. For example, Sunny’s first barn was isolated and surrounded by trees, cutting off her sight line. When I took her to the Show Grounds, I realized she’d never seen a mounted horse approaching her from far away.  One would come in the trail gate and she’d be paralyzed until she figured out what was going on.  Also, the traffic on Graham Hill Road includes large trucks and motorcycles, so be prepared for the unexpected.

And that’s my response.  By this point, I know that most of you will be looking for my picture in the dictionary next to “sissy”, “conservative”, “fuddy-duddy”, etc – but so many things in Horseland are unpredictable it seems like it’s smart to anticipate as many things as we can.  And if you don’t ever have to use your contingency plans, all I can say is “Congratulations!”

I’d love to hear additional ideas and/or comments from Mary Beth.

wanna ride?

donna

This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2010 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Events/Clinics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.