Disenchantment

Vegas' third ride went so well that I thought it was time to start introducing her to life outside of the barnyard.  My helper saddled up her mare and I prepared Vegas to lead down the road (gloves, tightened halter).  When she was ready, Vegas and I held the gate for them to come through.

Storm (helper's mare) was a little full of herself, though not un-handleable.  And Vegas did not seem to be feeding off of her so we turned left down to the dead end.  Vegas was walking faster than me so we did some circles but it was nothing unexpected.  We got to the end and turned around and she seemed to be calming down.  I was so happy with her!

Then we walked past the barnyard gate and Vegas got a view of the neighbor's runt pot-bellied pig.  Storm was blowing but Vegas seemed to be handling the situation well...until she wasn't.  She wasn't paying enough attention to me so I went to circle her and she blew right through the lead rope and went trotting back down to the dead end.  Okay...I wasn't prepared and should have been, I have wondered if she will try this when we're out somewhere.  But I was more concerned with showing her that everything was okay and I didn't realize what she was doing (remember, I had asked her to circle) until it was too late. 

Vegas trotted past the barnyard and started grazing outside of the pasture fence by some of the other horses. I approached nonchalantly, blocking her when she thought about going back down the road.  Eventually she approached me so walked her back down to the area in question.  This time, I thought I'd lead her on her right so that I was between her and the pig and try leading her by again (pig's pen is probably 30-40 feet off the road and the pig is not more than 30 pounds).  As I went to get on Vegas' other side, she took advantage and took off AGAIN and went down to graze by the other horses.

At this point, I'm trying not to be aggravated but I'm getting there.  I approach her again and this time I have to wait and walk fully up to her as she was not approaching me - she was too busy stuffing her face full of awesome un-grazed grass by the road.  So, here we go again.

By this point, I'm thinking that we need to go to the round pen and work on the pulling-away-from-me thing, again.  Now, she hasn't done this in a while and I thought we'd made some breakthroughs and she trusted me enough not to do this.  I will admit that I was wrong.  So, I walked back to the barnyard gate, but I was ready in case she tried to pull away sooner (pig is maybe another 50 feet down the road, so the gate is not overly close to the pen).  She did, try to pull away that is, but I was ready and she stopped with a pop on the halter.  So she tried harder, and I corrected harder.  So she reared and I held on and popped her a couple times again.  All the while, I'm trying to get her closer to the barnyard gate.  She seemed to calm down so I opened the gate...and she took the opportunity to blow through the halter AGAIN, this time into the barnyard.  By this point, I was pissed.  I held the gate open for the rider, and turned to find Vegas.  She had trotted up to Ruby, who was grazing in the barnyard, then turned her butt to Ruby and tried to double-barrel kick her.  I heard the thwack as one of her hooves connected with Ruby.  At this point I completely lost it and yelled something at her that rhymed with 'You bucking FITCH!!!'  Not my proudest moment but I was seeing red and shaking by this point.  I walked over to Ruby and checked her over.  I couldn't find any marks on her (then or when I checked again later), so I think she was too close to Ruby to hurt her. 

I calmed myself down enough to relax my body language and went to catch Vegas.  She tried to walk off but I was close enough to step on the lead rope.  I put her in the round pen while I went to sit in the barn and tried to stop shaking.  And to formulate my plan.  All the while I was calling her vile names under my breath, I was also trying to convince my helper/boarder-friend that I'm not really this crazy and I can actually control myself.

I went back to the round pen with a longe/lunge line (with a knot near the middle) and my lunge whip.  I approached Vegas and she decided to leave, so I pushed her and made her trot for 10 or 15 minutes, changing direction often. She stopped when I asked and stood for me to attach the line and I asked her to move off again.  She did fine until I asked her to turn around.  She did get away from me a time or two until I got smart enough to hold the line immediately above the knot (duh...).  The last time she tried to get away, I actually had to sit down to put enough weight on the line to get her to stop blowing through my cues.  By the end of the session, she was very sweaty but was no longer trying to get away, no longer leaning on the halter, and was changing direction nicely.  We will work on this again tomorrow (and the next day, and the next day....).

So, slight change of plans for Miss Vegas.  No more riding for now - we are going to concentrate solely on this issue and desensitizing (to build her confidence in us both) until this problem is hopefully resolved.  And, in the near future I'm going to ask if the neighbors will let me borrow their pig...