Changing Behavior

I realized I hadn't talked about TC in a while, so here's his post for this week.

Since I had come to the conclusion that if TC was going to be unrideable due to mental or physical limitations, he was going to be at the very least, easy to deal with on the ground, things have gotten much better.

The sunrise on the way to the barn, not edited, the sky is just
amazing sometimes

He's stopped biting completely. He doesn't move a muscle in the cross ties- not to squash me against the side, not to bite the cross ties, not to paw incessantly. Just stands quietly while I brush him. On our hand walks, it's more a question of if he is going to act up rather than when is he going to act up. He still has tendencies to want to take off dragging me down the road, but I carry the whip in front of him so that when he does go to bolt, I have the upper hand and can stop him immediately.

I've been working on getting him more comfortable with certain things and learning to handle himself better when he doesn't like stuff. For example, when I'm leading him and I walk to the side of a puddle, I expect him to walk through the puddle. For a while he would crowd behind me. That's not the behavior you want a horse who has a habit of dragging you down the road at a gallop to have. This crowding indicated that the puddle was more effective at changing his behavior than I was. Meaning he weighed the option of crowding me vs getting his feet wet and he thought crowding me was the better option.

So he walks through puddles now, or at least tries to skirt around them away from me. He also does the same thing when I ask him to walk near something he doesn't like. Such as the trailer that has been there the whole time he's lived there. Or the manure truck that has been there the whole time he's lived there. Or the pile of mats that have been there the whole time he's lived there. I've been standing him next to them and then I've taught him to shift his weight and move his shoulders toward it (since he tends to throw his shoulder away from it and into me, causing me to get off balance so that I'll open the door for him to gallop away from me). I've also taught him to take small steps and "sneak" past these things rather than realize I'm going to make him get too close to them and try to gallop away from them.

So generally, things have been a lot easier. I mean the whole situation SUCKS. I hate it. But at this point the situation is the only thing that has been hard- the horse has been relatively easy to handle.

Wandering around in the field is now less terrifying for both of us

Theoretically, if the weather cooperates, the plan is to move TC to pasture on February 25th. He's walking 35 minutes right now and I'm going to trot him out this weekend or next week and see if we can sneak in a minute of trot each day without pissing the leg off. It's a bit early soft tissue rehab wise, but I wanted to start it early enough so that if it DOES blow up, I can let both barns know that I'll be keeping him put for another month.

The leg has generally stayed down for a couple weeks, only getting slightly puffy alongside the other leg when it is warm out. I don't like that, but I also know from experience that Rico's legs did that every summer until he was put into pasture, and now his legs have never looked better. I'm really hoping, for both of our sake, that the same happens for TC in pasture.

Just a couple more weeks and then he's going to be so happy to be back out with friends! Although these friends are kind of boring- he'll be living with two retired horses. When the rain stops, he'll move to the gelding pasture. I don't want him in there now because there's no shelter, it's bigger/has more horses, and there's a creek running through it so it isn't totally flat. I think he's going to have the time of his life come summer though!

Fingers crossed we can get through the next exactly 22 days without killing each other and without his leg flaring up.