Butthead

Jetta has been such a brat the past two days! Now that she's coming up on 6 years old you would expect her to be a little bit more well-behaved, but no. She was acting like a two-year-old.

Yesterday our ride was actually pretty ok. I planned on rinsing off her muddy legs just to make sure she had no fungus going on since she has such sensitive princess skin. The BO came out and helped me figure out how to use the wash rack.

There were no cross ties so the BO offered to hold Jetta while I scrubbed her legs and then tackled her tail. Jetta was being obnoxious and licking her, bumping her with her nose, trying to eat the old nasty hay on the ground and attempting to knock over all of the shampoo bottles I had lined up. Really? You would think that she had no manners. I got her done as quickly as possible and the BO left while I tried to brush out and braid her tail.

That was when the real trouble started. She knows how to ground tie. We've practiced in the arena where I drop her lead rope, tell her to "ho" and I walk away. I guess there were just too many things going on in the wash rack to be bothered with standing still! Eventually I got sick of having to grab for the lead rope every time she tried to eat something she shouldn't be or walk away so I wrapped her lead rope around a small hook on the wall. For most horses, that small tension would be enough for them to say "Oh, I should be standing still." Not Jetta. She then proceeded to jerk on it until it came unwrapped. Multiple times. So I gave up on that idea. Then I tried to take some pictures of her hooves and try on her new boots (good news - they fit!) and she decided that was a prime opportunity to trot off. Twice.

I was very tempted to go tie her to the trailer and leave her there until she figured out how to stand still. I feel like I reinforced her naughtiness when I took her back to her nice stall and let her chow down on her grain. I think that was part of the problem - that she knew it was dinner time - but that is not a valid excuse in my book. I know what we'll be working on in the future - tying, lots and lots of it. And maybe some hobble training too - I think that would be really useful for trail rides and for situations like this.

Today wasn't a whole lot better. She wasn't terrible under saddle and actually our trot work was quite good, save for bordering on the danger zone, she was so light on the forehand it felt like she was preparing to launch any moment. Canter tranisitions were awful, I felt like I was riding a knight's destrier, charging into the canter like we were going into battle, lol. Either that or running into the canter from through the trot. Sigh... I think part of it is that I'm already stressed when I get to the barn because of school and work and the dressage team, and then when Jetta acts up it goes downhill from there. But the other part of it is that Jetta is just being a butt.

We have a dressage lesson on Saturday that I'm really interested in seeing how it pans out. Hopefully we'll do some work on those canter transitions and Jetta will behave herself!

PS. I meant to post pictures but I still haven't uploaded the software to get them off my (real) camera since my computer's virus so this post is boring and sadly lacking illustrations :(