·:[ Nerdettes weblog ]:·
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pas de deux album can be found here
(22.12.2008, 6 months, 3 days young)
sans quattro album can be found here
(25.12.2008, 6 months 6 days young)

Please note. If you do get some “OH SHIT” feeling when watching the pictures below, do remember I’m not a professional horse trainer or so. The foal is a now 6 month old Arab thoroughbred stallion just starting to get interested in ‘the other half’ and is full of energy which comes out one way or the other. We have our first sessions outside, on a halter, without mom. And yes, Klaus, you are right. It’s a Mr. Attitude and I just *love* it ;)
- - -
It’s time to get the 6 month old stallion outside of the paddock, with halter and line. He’s grown a lot, not only in body and weight and length, but also in his mind - he thinks he’s the one that rules the paddock at the moment. He prefers to push himself into other horses/humans one and then, while running off, give a high kick or at least aim in that direction without stretching.

Still runs to his mom when things get scary. But - he tries to bite the other horses and jump on them, in a playful but also ruling way. The hormones are kicking in, literally. I’m glad he knows he should not do such things with me; although he keeps on trying. It’s a strange feeling when I see him kicking his mom as she by accident pushed him, but when he tries to be playful with me and lifts a hindleg and gets “bitten” by me in his bum for that, he just squeezes his tail between his legs and walks off.
Another remarkable thing is that “intruders” - AKA ’strange’ people with strange things in their hands, are there to be pushed in a corner or to be chased away, “or else”. It very much shows in the way he approaches:

Head up, ears to the back, he looks straight at what he is going to. A bit what a dog or cat would do. Horses prefer the “I try to ignore you but observe you” approach and go a bit sideways, show their side, do something else and then approach in a zigzag.

Time to put the halter on; after I let them run around for a little while. They were kind of frisky as the weather is cold.

As this is the first time without his mom I expected him to become insecure the moment we would go out of sight of the other horses. I doubted if I should take my carrotstick or just use the line to keep his ‘canon’, his hind legs, away from me. However, I needed a longer line to give him some space for himself, which mean hands full and no place to hold another thing.

There are a few “rules” I stick to:

1) Do not turn your bum towards me

3) Respect my private space and don’t run into it - which is as wide as his hindleg plus an additional foot.

Actually I wanted to take mom with me; but wanted to test Muratah first in the paddock, when she was around. As I don’t want to have 2 horses with me with one flying around at the same time in ‘free space’ - I put Muratahs halter on and got immediate response with him biting in it

He was first surprised, but then did the “run sideways backwards” trick again - which is a bit difficult for me as I do not want to pull at the line; he’s got his head towards me but also his bum ..

It leaves me running after him while trying to “push” his bum away from me with the other end of the leadrope. The moment he did turn his bum away from me I wanted to give him immediate rest but then he walked backwards into the electric fence.. Naja :) Up to him to find out how that feels I would say…

Some of his preferred other “tricks” he uses to regain freedom are:

1) running off while walking by changing direction 180 degrees “away” from me.

I give a bit line to take the tension of the halter (which irritates him), walk along as long as he doesn’t turn his bum towards me. This most of the times ends up in a bit of head swinging and then eating as it doesn’t go much further. This can also end up in #2 below:

2) running off forward while next to me (just tries to pull me out of my shoes actually)

Not so sure what to do with this one as my first reaction is “I can’t run that fast” and then bend him into a long circle. As I do not want to have a ’strong’ stretched line but slack this is a bit difficult. The more line he gets the faster he runs off. Yes, he canters in a 2,5m circle around me, not a problem at all, you’ll see later.
I noticed he first does this running around with his head away from me, trying to ‘break through’ the circle, then when it is getting tiresome, he turns his head towards me, so I can disengage his hindquarters, away from me (the canon). He then tries to look for an ‘excuse’ to stop running, like e.g. ‘watching people in the distance’, ‘eat some grass’ or looking at the other horses which were there all the time anyway.

A few nasty things he found out in the meanwhile:
- use the full circle and then comes shot straight through the middle, where I am, then the “default” hind kick preparation. I block him completely with the leadrope and hands wide up high so he can’t go through there (=me). He therefore now prefers to do this behind my back, at the split second I got to swing my head from left to right. To evade his sneaky approach too close from the back I now follow him until I’m dizzy - and he is as well - see at #3:

3) running off behind me (after a 180 degree spin on his hind legs)
This also ends up in circling around me, which I then “stop” as described above. It’s always fun to see him pick his moment to start doing this. Except for one occurence he always turns towards me while turning around. The one time he did not he had the halter and line pulling him out of balance and his head up so he stumbled over the ground which he wasn’t watching, ending up in a nice roll over.

So.. first time out in the field - the whole way towards the forest was not a problem. Bit of food at three stops “in between” which were appreciated. His mom was happy to see him go and get some rest I believe :)

The little surprise I had for “little man” as I sometimes call him (although he acts as a grown up horse since the day he was born) - was that I went into the forest, out of sight of the group and his mom as well.
Strange but true, I’ve noticed that taking arabian horses into an area that is ’scary’ but not harmfull for them seems to glue them to yourself. The risk taken is that they freak out and get uncontrollable (in a controllable way though). The way Muratah approaches me compared to his mom seems to be on a bit higher respect level. Yes, he is trying out a lot, therefor it would not be a bad thing to ‘overwhelm’ him a bit and take him out of his secure area on his own, with just me there. It was just me and him and him and me, testing him how much he would trust me to follow and watching him where his herd/familiy instinct would grab’ him and set it over me.
I can’t really explain what it is like. Maybe if you know dogs - from the moment you can let them run unleashed; to the moment you’ve got to keep them on line as they might have smelled rabbits or deer and the only thing they can think of is “hunt the rabbit”..
Litle difference, “little man” is a bit taller, approaches the 150+kgs as well now and a bit faster. Plus, he’s got defence strategies a dog could only dream of. Ever seen a dog kicking?

So, what happened while we went in this narrow ’street’ with bush on both sides was obvious to me. He first stayed behind a bit,

however, when we went over the point where the way fowards would be shorter to the field than the way behind us, he became pushy.

On the little “crossroad” halfway he showed his eager to go forwards by trying to push me even more. All I could and wanted to do where (see above)
- do not run into my space …
yes, despite the narrow space there I wanted him to let his feet move. However, I lift up an arm and stick out my hind to mark my space a bit.
- He rears but doesn’t (get the chance to) stick his front legs towards me (a typical stallion move) because:
- When he starts running around or rears up I immediately move towards his hind legs and try to keep the tension on the halterline the same- but then so, that he has to watch me - I always get to see the side of his head and an eye.

While trying to make more space he also decided it would maybe make sense to change direction and try it that way. A very nice thing again is that he turns towards me while changing direction. What can be seen in the following pictures is me getting more space around me, Muratah turns around trying to turn around and speed up the other direction, and in the end we have a ‘compromis’ where he stopped his running around and gets what he wants - going further in the direction he wants to go to and a nice scratch on his chest.

more space and a bit of “split second resting”, immediately followed by a run in the other direction.

At one moment he got a bit of time to overthink, he put his head a bit lower, got a scratch over his chest and we walked where he wanted to go - back to the field with the other horses.

On the path where the field was visible he shouted (still squeeky noises though) out loud to see if he got a response.

To my surprise though he wasn’t getting too rushed or pushy, walked a long distance with slack in the line and him next to me

He got a little reward, some fresh green stuff which I pointed him to. However, he followed my hand, also on my way back up so I grabbed the twig and he could taste a bit. Normally I never feed horses from hand, this can end up in them biting you if they want something to nibble.

Well, as “expected”; when we were back in the field and the other horses within range of sound and sight, the little bomb exploded. Having a lot of free space compared to the narrow path before he decided to run as fast as he could. I did not want to let go of the line though - as I don’t like him getting to know he can struggle himself free like that. So.. did the same, stood in the middle, waited until he would cool down. He didn’t. He got more and more excited and agitated about not being able where he wanted to go in his way and speed, and then the limiting halter which apperantly had to do with that.

This resulted in IMHO some very nice action pictures (combination from a few days). Please keep in mind that we both are still learning, and that noone got harmed in the pictures as well. I’m still typing myself here ;)

Turning around in circles didn’t get us somewhere.

So we decided to give it a bit more speed.. at least, trying to do so..
First get annoyed with the halter:

Then give it a good sprint straight ahead

Which is stopped ..

But as that running around also didn’t bring us very much, as the circle was so small that not enough speed was possible to run away .. Let’s get airborn:

And well.. What happens if you turn one way and try to run towards the center.. you get blocked .. yet again

The other way around, turning around the ‘outside’ direction to change direction, an 8 shaped circle didn’t work well either

To my surprise he kind of got it - and me too.
I’ve learned that the way back to the group of horses causes for him a lot of excitement and he wants to run off to them. I’ve also learned that when something annoys him he will start trying to fight that (e.g., the halter, the rope being swung to his bum). No pressure on those therefor.
What he learned on our walks is that he can’t take off by himself, but that we get there together. And, more important, that we get further faster if he doesn’t try to run away.

One very important and recognizable thing is that he behaves so very much like a toddler.
An attentionspan of about 5, 10 seconds and then he gets distracted and looks for something else.
Better don’t let him get irritated by the halter *and* wanting to go back to the other horses, because then we end up in the circling and struggling.

Additional to that we trained some more on the field yesterday, played some games, like front and back sideways (porcupine game), driving game on his hind quarters and yoyoing as he just likes to stand in me from time to time. Friendly game all the way through, as he likes to be scratched everywhere.
It’s good to see him interested, up to me to keep him interested while playing. He does react well, so I guess I do it well.

I just wanted to put these 2 pics together; one where he still is struggling to go faster than he should.
Note the upright position of us both, as well as where we are looking at: he focusses on the other horses, I give him an ‘eyebrow’ that he should stay next to me:

The thing we’ve achieved by now is that we can almost walk nicely together, loose line, open hand, almost like here. Focus is as you can see still on horses and me on him, but much more relaxed:

We had another few walks the last few days and I must say, he’s doing a lot better. The walk we had together alone yesterday was a nice one, where I made the “way back” as short as possible, and had some interesting bits in between (we walked through the neighbourhood where a closing door is already reason to skip a step forward and then turn around).

Even someone cleaning his car with “a little round legged creature also on a wire that makes an immense monotone noise” (vacuumcleaner) didn’t scare him off at all. An ‘invite’ to have a look and come closer I had to quickly turn around, I bet he would have gotten into the car to have a closer look, making it all dirty again :)

The “way back” was with just with one little “effort to escape” but not fast, not furious, just more a playful “can’t we really go a bit faster?”-tug from him on the line.
Very nice end is that he always slows off very much when we walk past the other horses to enter the field again.
Mr “The King has returned in the field” ;)

And the baby gets his desert ;))