The Whole Eight Seconds

Sooooo lemme take another sip of this here wine.

Ah. Okay.

Little Mo gave me some grey hair today, I think. We were meant to go XC schooling with M and two of her clients (who are awesome people I love being around). The plan was to just hack him around and let him see spooky things and whatnot with horses who were likely to keep their heads. I had no plans to jump, but maybe go through the water, that kind of thing.

Well, that freaking plan got scrapped immediately. I was the last one on (he's a wiggle worm for tacking up at home, too) and didn't want to keep everyone waiting, so I didn't lunge him. I didn't think I'd need to. This horse has been quite sensible all along.

MISTAKE!

No sooner did I have my right leg over than he's taking off bucking like a rodeo bronc. It was quick and intense. I haven't been properly run off with in quite awhile, and the bucks were coming fast. It was all quite "Jesus take the wheel."

Here are the good things: I stayed on. M was incredibly impressed with how well I sat that shit (I learned something from Lexi, I guess). Mo did calm down eventually after I got off, and we hand-walked the whole school. I let him eat grass and watch. And I did get on him again at the end, in the ring with another horse who let me basically park Mo on his butt the whole time.

Here are the bad things: When he blew his stack, it really blew, and I was surprised. He never quite got his brain back entirely (ran backwards when switching from bridle to halter and took both M and me to get his goddamn halter on; serious loading issues, which is about when I ran out of quarters).

So we have some stuff to work out here, clearly. I'm just planning to take a lesson with M every day until I feel better or until my arms fall off from all the stall mucking I do in exchange for lessons (I'm overusing parantheticals today but I don't care--I just want to say that I feel like I've got the good end of this deal because one lesson with M is worth more to me than a day of mucking stalls. She's amazing).

This is green horses. This is what happens. I don't really know this horse yet. I've only had him for two weeks and known him a short time longer than that. This bucking has always been in there somewhere, I've felt the hitch in his back before. Maybe today he got over it, maybe not. We'll find out.