Continuing the discussion from Horse pulls down and dolphin-hops after jumps… HELP before I break my neck!:
1 Like
I have been off COTH for a long time and came back to this old topic. Just about everything has been said, but I wanted to add my mantra, which has served me well for over 30 years:
Our horses are talking to us in the only way they can. It is our job to listen.
That is what a good horseman does.
30 Likes
Glad to see you back
4 Likes
Likewise, glad you are still around.
2 Likes
Agreed that people need to listen to their horses better. If a horse is telling you “NO!”, at some point, you have to just accept it, even if you don’t truly know/believe the reason. They are larger and stronger than us, and if they are uncomfortable enough, they can do a lot of damage.
A funny story- my own horse is a very smart guy, who is excellent at communicating what he is feeling/thinking. My trainer and I have an on-going dialogue about “What Elliot thinks” when it comes to just about everything we do with him. He’s also green and we have done him ourselves from the bottom-up, so there is very little question of his life experiences. We have deducted that, in regards to his work, he likes to be in a group, he likes to canter and LOVES to jump. He has always been excellent at ground poles, he demonstrably prefers the footing in our indoor to the outdoor, and he wears his heart on his ears- you can get a great idea of what he is feeling based on his ears. A while ago, my trainer was calling an equine communicator, “just for the fun of it”, I mentioned she should ask about Elliot, just to see if we were right. WOWEEEE. Not only did the communicator mention everything above, but she described perfectly a gymnastic exercise that we had recently done that my horse absolutely nailed. She said he likes puzzles that he can sort out on his own and that he felt he did a really good job with that one. We joked that while using Elliot with the communicator was good proof that this lady was legit (she also spoke to other horses in the barn), it was kind of a waste of money because she didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know 
.
2 Likes
I read a little bit of that thread but wondered what happened to the OP and that horse.
1 Like
I doubt she comes back. She just did NOT want to hear anything other than the echo chamber advice she came looking for. I hope she didn’t get hurt and that the horse is ok.
4 Likes
The only reason I ask is there are a notable number of upper level jumpers that buck on the backside of a jump. Some every blessed jump. This horse sounds naughty. And sometimes you can’t fix that.
