Self taught Stress Training 101

Well the winter continues and with the warmer day, I felt a little riding would be nice. So off to Janet's arena I hauled. After riding around and around and around for a little bit, I felt a little stress training was needed. Peanut was doing very well at warming up, in fact he had a little coat of sweat on him after I removed his blanket once he was unloaded. So a small course was set up.

First there was the always there tee-tee totter, then a came the blue tarp on the ground. Janet tied some twine to a orange cone, so that we could lift it up and move it, drag it, or whatever. I tied some yellow horse eating caution tape to a plastic coal shovel, we stuffed some yellow horse eating caution tape in our pockets so we could trail it off of our horses. Then came the INFLATABLE SNOWMAN. Yep, we were set up of a little training.

You can tell Peanut and his buddy Rustin are young horses. While setting up our little stress course, these two decided it was time to play. Janet had an used cardboard box sitting in the corner, it had some crumpled up paper towel in it, nothing bad, just a box. Well, to say the least, Janet put the words to the fact. Peanut is very oral. There sits the cone and the box. Of course there stands Peanut and Rustin. Peanut finds the box, Rustin finds the cone. Peanut grabs the box by one of it's top flaps and begins flipping it up and down. Of course, Rustin decides he has to join in on this too! Janet and I just stand there watching and laughing at the little antics these two are involved in. Rustin rips a chunk off the box and decides it's something to eat. Janet managed to get the piece from Rustin and place it out of harms way. She then hands Peanut the orange cone. I did not think a person should be laughing as hard as I was. This was completely entertaining. Not only to us, but the horses as well.

Well after mounting up and crossing the tarp and poles, came the tee-tee totter. Rustin had no issues with this. Peanut just basically refused to completely go over it. He has done it many many times, but he just did not want to do it. So instead of frustrating him and myself we moved on. Janet and Rustin were working with the orange cone, that Peanut and Rustin had been playing with eariler. Rustin allowed Janet to pick it up and move it to the mounting block and then back to the fence. He did not like it touching his legs, but that is just something small we will help him get over. Peanut on the other hand, would not side pass up to the fence where the orange cone was, so I had to leeeeeaaaaannn way over and grab the twine. Of course Peanut did not have a care in the world where the orange cone was. In fact, I put in on Peanut's butt and rode around with it there for a minute or two. Ok, so it was more like 30 seconds, but Peanut took it like a every day task.

Now on to the plastic coal shovel attached to a long long piece of horse eating caution tape. Oh the dreaded caution tape. Every other horse I have owned knows that this caution tape has teeth 10 feet in length and it will gobble a horse up in one bite. Peanut just looks at it and says, "oh yeah, if you bite me, I will bite you back and play with your dead yellow caution tape body"

So I start off making Peanut back up, while the shovel drags in the dirt in front of him. I then turn him to the right, so that he gets use to the pressure of something touching his flank. After walking and trotting with the shovel dragging behind him on the left side, I have to get it to the right side. So I just switched hands and had Peanut drag it while it rubbed all over his right flank.

When I found he had no issue with this, now it time to see how he will react to it under his tail and the feel of pressure on the back of his legs. Now please note, caution tape break pretty easy with enough pressure. So I back Peanut into the yellow caution tape. The tape tightens, more pressure, my mind is thinking, he's going to jump forward, he's gonna jump forward. But then when you least expect it, Boom, Nothing. He does nothing. Dang, I was expecting a little reaction out of Peanut. Well since he is not reacting to that, now it's Rustin's turn.

Well, we can't complain to bad over how our horses are acting. We do have to remember they are still pretty young, but they are fast learners. Now it's time for the........................

INFLATABLE SNOWMAN!

Janet and I ride Rustin and Peanut up to this white nylon blob on the floor of Janet's arena. It just lays there lifeless. No movement at all. So I jump down, well I can't really say it was a jump down, as much as a lean forward, kick my right leg up and over Peanut's rump, and I can't not really explain in words how it must look to see me dismount my horse, but I know it is not pretty. I now am plugging in the snowman. Slowly he fills. Peanut is more interested in eating it, then reacting to it. Rustin is looking at it and saying in Penaut's voice, "WHAAAATTT THEEEEEE HEEEELLLLLL". As the snowman gets taller and taller, Peanut discovers there is a extra large carrot on the face of this being. FOOD is what he is thinking. "Can I Eat it?"

If you watch Peanut's expression in the video, he gives me this look as if to say,
"Ok lady, is this supposs to scare me or something? Get Real!"

Rustin looks at the snowman and looks like the thing is going to come after him.

After a few moments, Janet dismounts and is making the snowman wave it's arms, we both make the fabric make the noise that nylon does when you rub on it. Finally, Rustin is right there beside Peanut, smelling, tasting and rubbing on the snowman. Battle won; Horse 2, Snowman 0.

We continue to work both horses with the blue tarp on them and off them and work them with the wind sock flag that Janet keeps in her barn. These two horses may be young, but they have alot of brains in their heads and are willing to learn and test everything we put in front of them. Peanut just wants to eat everything I put in front of him, and he is not starving. He just likes to taste everything. So after 4 hours plus in the saddle, Janet and I decide to go outside in the daylight, the wind and the bitter cold. We ride down the road and find that we were a lot warmer back in the barn. It did not take us long to ride back inside and out of th elements of Northern Michigan. I feel we both conquered alot on Sunday afternoon. We won our little superbowl of stress training 101 redneck style.

And so, until next time, keep an eye open for the next blog.