[KigerQueen]

many of you who have followed my posts know i have mostly put my mare out to pasture for recurring lameness issues. So i have "kidnaped" my fiance's 9 year old gelding Odie. My fiance had odie since he was 9 months old. He raised him to be a mini him. except that the moose grew to be about 16.3hh! Odie has not been worked with in about 3 to 4 years so im kinda tarting over. Took him to his first horse show last weekend and he did well. moved him to a new barn for the first time in his life. Now our story has begun.

 

[KigerQueen]

i wanted to post this slightly separate from the main thread. i love odie but man can he be a turd! the concept of changing directions on the lunge line is beyond him! he will go right but when i ask him to turn left we turns his butt to the left and just starts backing up. or he side passes around me in a circle... fought with him for almost an hour on that today and FINALLY won! then he tried to run me over once i set him loose in the round pen resulting in a good smack on the butt. then he ran like and idiot and tripped. he slid on his side quite a distance. luckily he was fine but lord! I love him and i KNOW he is smart but sometimes he is quite dense -_-'. we ended (take 2) on a positive note with some flexing and desensitising. We also need to work on standing still longer than 3 min. He got scolded for trying to take a chunk out of the table today while standing tied. then he got reprimanded for trying to eat his lead so he settled for chewing on his own tongue instead. The word special comes to mind when i think of that horse lol!

 

[KigerQueen]

so after ALL that fighting yesterday i FINALLY made some progress with changing direction! I also worked on his setting up and standing still for halter. AND his most annoying habit of crowding when being led.

Go it on vid too! the first part were he thought about bowing instead of turning was at the end of the last vid. but not much was missed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKgYwh6xw5U

 

[KigerQueen]

Odie was a good boy yesterday! no pulling my hair out. I just focused on what we did the day before. quietly yielding his hind quarters and a less panicked direction change. he is getting there. worked on yielding his forequarters. did not get more than two steps but i find that if i get 2 steps one day i can get 7 the next. played with him on in hand trotting and setting up. sitting still is hard for him apparently so 20 seconds of standing still was a move in the right direction lol!


he is also starting to build a little muscle. when moving there was a divot on his hindquarters that was not there before so there is that. his slow feeder should be coming in today so he will always have hay in-front of him. ill probably fill it with mostly alfalfa and Bermuda. then as he gains weight ill ween him off the alfalfa to mostly Bermuda.

 

[whisperbaby22]

Nice horse. Let me know how you like the slow feeder.

 

[KigerQueen]

got it today, it can EASILY fit 4 large flakes of alfalfa in it! he chomped down for 30 min and hardly ate half a flake so i think its fantastic! i can fill it once a day and not have to worry!


Sooo im an idiot and hit the time laps button on my little camera... sooo the awesome training session i recorded is so sped up you cannot make heads or tails of it -_-'... BUT he was fantastic! he changed direction no problem and yielded both hind and forequarters. still need to work on it but he did it without having any type of tantrum. and i was making him do A LOT of direction changes. Back and forth. he was SUCH a good boy today! After having such a solid and good session i turned him out in one of the arenas and gave him 30 min to fart around before i went in there and made him move a bit and kinda play. he just wanted to go back to his hay lol!
https://youtu.be/tFDUn_iyguE

Here is the laped vid. i slowed the speed x4 so you can somewhat see whats happening. frames are missing and its a crappy vid but better then nothing. no vid tomorrow. my truck is in the shop for my upper balljoints. the passengers side is about to snap so my fiance is taking me to work and home tomorrow. we will stop by and see him for a bit just not long enough to give him some love and food.

 

[tinyliny]

video is a hoot! like a couple of caffeinated ants!

 

[KigerQueen]

oh lord i know! i MIGHT be able to take more vid tomorrow that is NOT time lapsed. BUT my fiance wants to go to the lake and set things on fire so Kiger may not get pony play time. that being said our training sessions tend to be under 10 min. i mean that was ALL i did with him today training wise. its 10 min or less. short and simple seams to work with his squirrel like attention span. so i MIGHT get my way XD!

 

[LoriF]

He looks like a good boy and he is trying. Good luck with his training sessions. LOL love the last video.
How much did the hay net run you? I'm thinking of getting one like that.

 

[KigerQueen]

$72 on amazon (i did a trial of prime but it dose include free 4-5 day shipping). After my arab ate an entire hay-net one day i wont EVER use them again (did try again and said mare started eating her new one even when it was always full) so i was willing to give this a try. love it so far. will see how it holds up

 

[whisperbaby22]

Slow feeders definitely need to be tuned to each individual horse. That one looks good, hope it works for your horse.

 

[KigerQueen]

he has never seen a slow feeder so i was happy when he did not get frustrated with it. my mare i ended up taking a bit of no climb fencing because it was the only thing she would not eat... yeah she kept bending the fencing so much she ended up braking that too.... and after she choked on Bermuda she now lives on soaked pellets. this is why she cannot have nice things...

 

[CaliforniaDreaming]

I have a net chewer too. He's destroyed more slow feed hay bags than I want to remember. I'd say he can't have nice things but his new slow feeder is a thing of beauty, and he hasn't clobbered it yet.

Luckily, my mare does just fine on the regular cheapie hay bags clipped down in her feed tub.

 

[KigerQueen]

cant get out to see my boy today or yesterday (upper ball joints on my truck are DONE). messaged a friend and she said yesterday evening it was still mostly filled with hay! so ether that slow feeder really dose its job or he got fed up lol!

 

[KigerQueen]

Good lord!!! turns out my ball joints are original! my truck is 17 YEARS OLD! so my parents NEVER replaced the ball joints!!! its almost as bad as when they DID NOT TELL ME i was driving on the ORIGINAL SPARE TIRE that came WITH the truck in 1999! I think they MAY be trying to kill me...

 

[tinyliny]

Ball joints?

 

[KigerQueen]

yep. its the things holding your tires into your upper and lower control arms (and your truck/car). they should be replaced every 4 or so years... yeah...

in other news i rode odie last night! my fiance hoped on him bareback and rode him around the round pen, hopped off then had me hop on. yes i was being led but i feel its a step in the right direction. as my fiance said "you're still on him so he must like you" lol!

 

[KigerQueen]

so for every 3 steps forward there is about 12 steps back... he was good for his legs getting clipped (NEVER had clipers near his legs or face. never worked with with clippers besides when i roached him). quite proud of him. good for lunging. then whent to give him a bath and he fell apart. he refused to walk to the wash rack/crosstie. he dose this on ocation and you just have to give him a tug and he gives up and walks in. not today. he set back and nearly pulled me over. so i made him back up. he poped his front end up at me. so now a look like an abusive horse owner because i kept smacking his chest making him run in reverse (I will NOT tolerate that type of behavior EVER!). so we walked back and tried again. this time he pulled back and poped his front end up again. im supersized there is hair left from how much i smacked his chest on that one. then he tried to run me over earning another good wack on the butt. then he realized this sucked so i should stop being a brat. then into the wash ties we went. no incident after. then i put him in the wash rack and he tried to pull back against me and realized in crazy and thats a bad idea.

now odie has no patients so i leave him tied up while i get his food ready and refill his hay bag. well odie decided to rub his nose on the horse shoe welded on the hitching post. 3 guesses when happened next... so he nearly broke his nose and ended pulling the nose of the halter off and now he had the halter just around his neck. THEN he pulled back against that. so goodbye new halter... his poll was sore as was his neck. his rib was way out but the trainer knew how to put it back so he is fine on that front now.

so cant work him with the halter tomorrow as he will be sore. but i took time off of work for the show this sat so hopefully he will be fine by then. and not a massive brat...


also he has figured out the hay bag so he is eating 4 flakes of alfalfa in 1 day now. will be picking up some Bermuda tomorrow along with a new halter.

 

[KigerQueen]

So Odie did fantastic yesterday! SOOO proud of him! he placed 4th out of 7 horses in the halter class. he actually managed to stand (mostly) square and still the entire class.

he got 6th out of 7 in the ranch confo class. about half way through the class he lost his ability to stand mostly square and still. and he was staring at my fiance for almost the entire class lol. i have not really worked on him with standing still square too much so i think he did quite well dispute that.

the main thing we NEED to work on is trying to turn into me when trotting. at home he is fine but the judge was clicking at the horses to make them trot off faster so he kinda jumped into it and me a bit. all well not bad for his second show.

ill post pics from the show later (at work). here are a couple pics from the day before the show.

 

[KigerQueen]

so i was feeling to tired to bother with actual work with odie today. got some vid of me moving him around a but.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFG5mvkHWCU