Scooter

I profiled Scooter back in January. He is my little red horse. I moved Semper home for a much deserved break from stall life and moved Scooter to Semper's stall at SCR. Scooter is a thinker. And he thinks that this stall life is pretty special. At least so far. This is the first horse that I am doing my own ground work. I am going to try to make each lesson count and teach him something new every time we go out. If the ground work goes well I will continue to start him myself. I plan to keep journal of each lesson so I can look back and see where I screw up and what worked out well. I spent his second day there giving him a clip job because he looked so shaggy. About half way through I realized it was only the second time he had every been clipped and he had never had his legs done. But Mr. Thinker was standing quietly and just going with the flow. I took him to the arena to just move him around a little. He has never been lunged so I wasn't expecting much. He took to it like a duck to water. Like something he had been doing forever. A couple of times he took off towards the gate but with a quick correction he was back and working. One thing that I noticed... is with out that extra 125 lbs on my body, they can move me around a lot easier than they used to be able to. On Monday I put the saddle on him. This is the second time he has ever been saddled. The first time was just on a dare from my wonderful husband. Both times he has just accepted it without as much as a flinch. I walked he and Ms. Lily over to the arena and tied him to the wall. I started riding Lil and he decided to lay down. When he realized that wasn't going to work he got up and started kicking the wall and pawing the ground. I ignored him for awhile but it just got worse and worse. I decided that maybe I should have worked him first so I tied Lil up and got him. I spent 20 or 25 minutes lunging him and making him work. He has so much hair that he really gets sweaty easy and since I am only able to work with him at night I need to be careful just how overheated I get him. I don't want to be out there till midnight cooling him out. On the lunge line he didn't buck or fuss over the saddle, he had a couple moments of brattiness but came back around and did as he was asked. Recap of Monday night: Second saddling, second lunging - His overall grade for lesson #1 is a B. Tuesday night I saddled him and took him to the arena alone. He didn't fuss about being saddled or leaving Lil and his other stable mates. That is a plus. He went right to work on the lunge line. (I would love to work him in the round pen but we have had a lot of rain and it is dark outside by the time I get there and that makes the round pen off limits.) He went both directions, walk, trot, lope, no dragging me around, no bucking, a little head shaking but nothing a slight correction didn't fix. Next I worked on having him yield his hind quarters around. Then moving his front end around and flexing his head/neck with light pressure. I keep each lesson short and when he would get it right, we would stop and rest. He did a lot of licking and chewing and responded well to praise. We worked on "Whoa" on the lunge line. We also worked on just dealing with the rope being around his hind quarters and around his legs. He could have cared less. He stayed with me the entire time. Really focused on what I wanted and had a lot of try. Grade for lesson #2 is an A. One of the hurdles that I think that I am going to have is the standing tied with out fussing. He doesn't set back or pull, he paws and bucks in place and if there is a wall he will kick at it. He needs to stand tied for hours to learn patience and I can't be out there during the day to do that. I need to figure out a solution.