Friday, August 10, 2012

Murphy's Law

There should actually be two versions of Murphy's Law-
Things never go as planned
&
Everything that can go wrong- Will!

I think everyone is pretty familiar with both of these, although the part about never going as planned may happen more than everything falling apart.

How this applies to my horses- I have not gotten a chance to put the mare in long lines yet or ground drive her. In fact the new surcingle hasn't even made it out of the bag, except for me taking it out to look at it when it arrived. It did make it as far as getting out with the rest of the tack, but that's it. Still hasn't seen a horse yet.

My mare- well she needs her feet done and I have been treating her for an abcess on the front left. If she can't stand on it, how am I supposed to trim the other one?  Horses are enough to make us all nuts sometimes, aren't they?

I did get Kat trimmed a couple of weeks ago and the cart was finished and brought home... We managed to slip in a couple of drives, but it was in the small turnout since the cows have been in the back trying to eat down the weeds. Why not drive in with the weeds? Seriously they are taller than I am. I tried ground driving Kat through them. What a joke!

I figured it would be good for him to learn to go where I point him if he can see or not. He needs to trust me sometimes and just do it.  He went in the weeds all right, but the weeds are stalky and very unforgiving. The traces although fastened up over his back- were caght in the weeds and tugged at. The lines trailing behind me kept snagging on stuff. Kat kept trying to grab bites off the weeds, although he is far from starving(!) and the bugs, did I mention the damn BUGS? Holy crap! I had sprayed him down good with fly spray before we started, but it did him no good. I was also being dive bombed and swarmed. Forget that idea. First chance I had to turn him around, I did, because by this time we were at the far end of the pasture of course. 

Once we moved over into the small turnout, thins were fine. I ground drove him a touch and he was awesome. I put him to the cart and he did great. We managed about 45 minutes of good solid work. I had closed off the one panel to keep the cows out so then I could open the big gates to the weed patch and drive through them. One of my friends horses thought we were the Devil in carnate and out to get him. He wanted no part of us going past his stall, but settles in pretty quick since none of our horses were bothered. Still he kept a watchful eye on us.

I fell we are more than ready for the upcoming Darby. This is the same event we went to last year as our first outing in harness. It's tough to believe a year has gone by already. Crazy I know.  There will be fun to have, new friends to make, people we know to see and maybe I will be able to convince Kat to get in the water, proving to him it is ok to get his little hoofies wet. I will be taking my long lines with us for a 'start without the cart' training session and option. Once he is going in and out, I will hook him and lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat... 

2 comments:

Sherry Sikstrom said...

Good luck in the Darby, and the rest , well it will come when it comes, I have been 2 steps forward 3 steps back for so many years I just believe I will set it o music!

Cut-N-Jump said...

I think there is already a song- 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Same idea, just less steppin' to do. LOL!