crazy mare-ending the crazy

Well, since Dude is lame, our vet decided to quit doing large animals, our old vet we called back screwed us over/lied/tried to cheat BO, Dude is still lame and still not diagnoses (but according to this vet he has arthritis in his back right [I don't think so] and has hoof issues with both front feet [I wouldn't put money on it, but I'm not going to say they're wrong], I am now leasing Lucky. We, mainly I, call Luck Crazy Horse; she's hot and kicks on trails, at gates, and at other horses. I plan on calming her down a bit, and having her drop the kicking completely. Yes, I still plan on taking her to shows and for trail rides, but I do plan on taking precautions and doing my best to keep her out of situations where she may feel the urge to kick.
Today was the first time I've actually taken to do work with her, and I found out a few things. She needs to be more supple, become lighter in the mouth, work on trying to dash while kickig and bucking when she thinks we're going back down to the barn, work on getting a collected canter, hand gallop, and full out run, and standing still while mounting. I plan on working with mounting, kicking, lightening her mouth up, and her attempted dash back to the barn. I'm going to try and refrain from anything more than a simple canter since her feet are due about next week and I don't want flipped over on if she trips.

So, today.(: I think that it went very well. I ended up taking my friend Kelly up with me to the barn (she got some pics, I'll post them with my next update most likely..), and I got her up on Lucky for some handwalking and a few trot strides.
I did circles in the round pen, w/t/c and did some stopping, backing up, and worked on opening the gate a bit. She tried to rush out as soon as I unhooked the latch, so we backed around the pen about half way around, walked out calmly the second time.
BO brought her lesson kids up and I watched them for a bit (I think I'd only be able to deal with older kids, lol), Lucky parked out since we were standing on a hill, and we had a nice level headset. I don't see why everyone else rides her in a tie/down..her head never flew up into any sort of giraffe-y position my whole ride.
I just walked around the arena and stood and talked to BO and the new boarder for the rest of their lesson mostly (two hour lesson), and ended up with a slightly ornery response from Luck when they went down to the barn to untack and leave. I am proud that she didn't kick while the kid riding Poco kept trotting up her butt and didn't get away. ;; Then, I trotted/cantered the stakes pattern BO had set up for them, and then did a nice, easy barrel pattern before I went down to the barn. We took about 10 minutes to get back down to the barn since she decided she wanted to dash down and anticipated running. So, everytime we broke gait to a trot, we spun around and walked the other way. It took 3 times, and even though she was a little prancey, we walked/prances back to the barn without breaking into a trot or canter.
Untacked, hosed her off (after fiddling with the hose and seeing what was suppose to do what, lol), talked to BO about Dude (and found out what I said above about him), and pt Lucky back out in the field. I also found out that the halter I was trying to sell to someone atthe barn isn't being sold ;; So, since the giant royal blue one I have for Dude doesn't fit lucky (even with the smallest adjustments) that I'm going to just use I on lucky. :3 It fits her nicely and doesn't look ugly. I will admit that I'd like something neon/graphite/bright on her since she's black, it's too bad the halter I bought first was black too, ha.
All in all, there was no kicking and I had a pretty good 2.5 hour ride. I will be sore, but that's to be expected with my 2 weeks off.
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I went up and rode yesterday, but I was pretty much exhausted and passed out as soon as I got home, so I didn't get to post last night.

Yesterday went relatively well, only had a few spots I was worried/upset with her. I basically rode all day with the exception of doing hay for about 2 hours.

Our first trail ride that..just about everyone at the barn went on wasn't too bad. We had planned on doing a trail ride for my cousin's lesson, and Vic, Mendi, Mel, Hayley, my cousin, Dres and I all went for (in order lol). We didn't (Lucky and I) have an issue waiting until everyone else walked up the hills so that we could run, even though Drew had problems on the whole ride with Pistol. I was both surprised and glad that Lucky wasn't at all influenced by him.(: We had a bit of an issue with which "group" we were going with when we came out into the hay field because Drew wasn't going to race Pistol because he was acting up horribly and had a little rodeo (some nice bucks/crow hops) right before we got out of the woods, and Lucky was trying to go with the larger group to race, so I decided to go and walk with Drew instead of let her run like she figured she would get to do. Even as much as I wanted to run her and see if we could beat the ex-racer, haha.
We walked back to the barn after we waited for the rest of them to run and dealt with Toby slightly freaking out with my cousin o.o I tossed Lucky in her stall with her bridle off and girth loosened while everyone else sprayed off and Drew took Pistol up to the round pen to run the hell out of him since he was wanting to run so bad the whole time Drew was on.

After we relaxed for a little, hosed Pistol off and tossed him back out in the bottom field, and I untacked Lucky we cleaned the middle barn, started hay, sprayed off, got drinks, were determined to finish hay before everyone else came to help so we could ask for free trailer fees (lol), we didn't finish and took another hour to finish throwing bales up in the loft and tossing them half way back. We then took hay to the middle barn and relaxed for a bit more.

I then tacked Lucky back up, got on, Drew hopped on Toby bareback and got the clippers for me, we went back out on the trails to cut them. Lucky did extremely well considering how she was when I rode her last year on a trail. Yesterday was the first time I had a horse behind me while I was on her. Normally any horse behind her needs atleast one full horse length for her to not kick, and two horse lengths to not pin her ears, and Toby was only about a foot away.(: She didn't have pinned ears, didn't kick, didn't offer to kick, etc. We wasn't Blue Tarp (small trail with lots of jaggers/trees and I clipped all the jaggers back so that it's difficult to touch them even if you're leaning halfway out of your saddle, lol. (I absolutely hate jaggers if you didn't know, haha) We took the Old Foundation and ended up taking almost all of the branches and leaves off the tree that hangs down between the two hills at the end of the Old Foundation. We walked down to the Pine Trees and cut some poison oak on the way (I offered since I'm not allergic, but Drew cut it anyway lol), and we ended up going in on opposite sides of the actual trees and planned on meeting in the middle. This, is where I had relatively many issues with Lucky. I can understand that she doesn't like standing in this part (I would either lol), but that's not enough reason to start spinning, backing, sidestepping, and eventually ramming me into vey hard branches that are rather sharp sticking off the trees.. I ended up grabbing my crop and smacking her ass everytime she backed, her neck everytime she threw her head up or on the side she started spinning to, and her side on the side she starting stepping towards, all along with leg/rein pressure. We then ended up going out across the road to a little creek, walking that for a bit until there was a down tree we weren't going to try and cross, and then went back up the road instead of crossing back over to our trails. We planned on doing a nice slow canter up the road (since neither have shoes, or else we would have walked), and ended up having both horses take off and not want to stop. Drew decided that aiming Toby for trees would work (it did) and I ended up just using the pulley method type stop because ORS was NOT going to be safe. ;; We walked the rest of the way and went into the top field using the old hay gate. Toby took off, Lucky took off for about 3 strides and I only had to stop her like normal, whereas Drew did an ORS. I pranced the rest of the way along the fence to the barn, and Toby actually walked (why can't Lucky have been trained by Drew? . She'd be so much more sane >.< ). I untacked, gathered everything, and hosed Lucky off. BO tried getting us to wash her dog off since she never put it back in the house and she decided to come with is, but since she didn't come up when we called for her, she didn't get washed.
I left, realised I don't remember putting my crop away or even taking it off the saddle horn, and passed out after I ate Taco Bell. :p
So, overall she wasn't too bad, she did kick at Toby after we finally got them stopped after they took of on the road..but I can't expect her to be perfect all at once. One kick while she's super excited is angelic compared to how she was before (kicking nonstop, tossing her head, and tucking her head Rolkur style on her own). I do plan on looking for that crop next time I'm there though >.> It has to be in the field, in the arena, or in the barn..because it was there when I walked through the gate into the field. It was only $3 and it works good, lol.

But, again, I will post pictures -next- update..since I don't feel like getting on the computer after having already typed all of this on my touch pod ;;
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