It is embarrassing to write the stories of my Fancy Horsemanship failures. This isn’t a fiction book.
Tony Vaught is Fancy’s farrier. He comes from Florida to take care of Fancy and many others. We Midwest customers refuse to let him be free of us. This particular day, he got done early with his other customers on this day and showed up early. I asked if he would ride Fancy after her shiny new shoes are attached. YES! I was near heart attack happy. Sadly, it was a long cold afternoon, but I was the only one that suffered from numb frozen toes.
Tony rode and fiddled around with hindquarter turns, backing and stops. Fiddling around is what it looks like. Actually, he is fixing her. After he “fixed” her, he did three flying lead changes. I died. It was effortless on Fancy’s part.
I asked what he fixed. His answer was “she is heavy in the bridle. Her stop was not good. Her gait went lateral a few times when she was bracing into the bit.” He went over the rules of sit and stop backing. Oh yes, I remember that!
The next day I rode her and it was a dream ride. We did near slide stops and we did all the gaits including a lot of circle cantering. Oh the joy!
The next day I decided to fix Fancy. Every time she pinned her ears at a request I made, we would do hindquarter turns. Yep, that will fix everything.
I was fully in the process of “fixing her” when she made it adamatly clear to me that my bossy mission was unacceptable. The ride was miserable. Fancy and I had dual temper tantrums.
I went home and had a chat with myself. Myself is very disappointed in myself. Myself and I spiraled into depression. Thankfully our climate went into full winter cold and snow mode. I brought Fancy home and gave her a vacation. Hopefully she will forget the temper tantrum day and I will talk myself back into horsemanship competency.