crossing creeks and rivers

You mean evil puddles like THESE! Rick plows through them, Cowboy tries to roll in them, and Dash sidesteps them when she can.

Now that creek down there is a whole nother story. It's a slippery shallow sheet of tabled limestone, and it's loud/fast because the waterfall is only 45 feet away from the crossing. I had to walk Rick through the first time, in January, because he wasn't quite sure of the footing. You can tell my pants are still wet two hours later. Take him across that creek a mile down the road where there's boulders and no problem!

LOL, think of it this way, they make for "expressive" cutters that wont push on your cow side leg...tee he
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Yupp my horse sunny would leap and leap and trip over himself, start walking sideways to avoid puddles.. now we can go over puddles but...... mud... if he sees it it stops so quick as if its a mountain lion.. and if he doesnt notice it until he steps in it and his foot slides.. wow.. he's like ahhhhhhhhhhh! Im dying and runs about a billion mph to get out.. and as soon as were out he is normal haha

My horse tries to jump small creeks or if we are going down a very steep bank then heading back up the other side he'll try to jump the last little but onto the upper bank. Not my favorite. He does however, slog through mud no problem. I keep his chin tucked so he can't reach out to jump and we ease our way into whatever he wants to jump. Then I let up just a little so he doesn't jump out of it. It only takes me doing this one time per ride and he knows that I won't let him jump.

I have been working on this issue for several months now. Today was the first day that my horse politely crossed the same old creek we have been arguing about for a while. She was so terrified the first few times that we crossed it, but she can't stand still while the other horse goes on and she had to either stand there or cross it. She is getting braver and braver.

My horses actually do better with a real stream than if I ask them to cross a mud pubble.

This creek was all of about 3" deep... the rest crossed just fine.. mine took 45 minutes and a candy cane...

Sorry that was so huge.. gotta figure out how to make my pics show up smaller!