Time for a theory lesson today (which means that I am suffering riding withdrawal at the moment, and will continue to do so for the coming week), and we continued with the same subject as the last two theory classes: horse behaviour. Having observed a few of the ponies interact with each other in the arena, as well as one of the ponies interacting with us, the time had come to discuss the stable manners of some of our horses.
We started with Murphy, since he obliged us with a show of bad manners as we walked past his stall; as always when he notices someone outside of his stall, his ears ended up pinned back and he half-turned to glare at us. As my instructor has told me before, this has much to do with him being raised on Ireland until he was 6-6,5 years old. Most likely, he spent very little time tied up in a stable, and he really doesn’t like being confined. Later on, she showed what a change you see in his attitude if you turn him around so that he can look out; he’s a very, very curious horse, and staring into a wall for much of the day is less than exciting. Of course, he’s also learned, after three years at the riding school, that a bit of acting up is excellent for scaring away pesky people, and as a high-ranking horse he doesn’t mind trying to act dominant towards people as well.
The next victim was Gamir, who is a former show-jumping horse. He competed quite a lot, possibly some internationally too, and he just loves attention. When she turned him around, he perked up as soon as he saw a whole group of people looking at him. His problem is that when you brush and saddle him, he makes a big fuss. Partly, this is due to the stress he would have experienced when competing, and partly it is caused by his back being very sensitive. So, you do need to make sure you don’t rush through brushing him and tacking him up, but even then he will kick (but he pretty much never tries to bite), so you have to strike a careful balance between being calm and reprimanding him when he’s acting up out of old habit. Like Murphy, he’s a fairly dominant horse (he’s one of the top four geldings, together with Murphy, Dark Digidoo and Campino), and he has some behaviour towards other geldings that suggests he was kept as a stallion until fairly late, but he’s so well trained that he almost never tries to be dominant towards people.
One who really doesn’t like to yield to people is Dominique, a mare that we haven’t had in the stable for all that long. Our instructor showed up she wouldn’t automatically move her hindquarters aside when she walked into the stall, which is a sure sign that she considers herself high in rank, and when she finally did move aside she snapped in the air and tossed her head, making it very clear she was unhappy with what was asked of her. She would not, however, go as far as to try and bite our instructor, but she probably would have tried with someone she respected less. After her, we glanced at a few others and discussed behaviour in general, as well as found the time to talk a bit about the new extension of the stable, which finally is almost ready to be used.
I find these sorts of theory lessons very interesting (though I still miss riding, of course), and I wish I had some horses closer by that I could spend time studying. Especially during the summer, when they spend a lot of time together, and get the chance to function as a more realistic herd.