Long Time No See...

Hey y'all long time no see.

Some of you may have noticed

or maybe not, I'm not super relevant,

but I kind of fell off the face of the earth and went inactive. Wish I had an explanation for you, but I really don't. I haven't had the greatest year so far. This spring I was so stressed and overloaded from school that I didn't really have much time to be on amino, and once school was over I just kind of "forgot" amino was there. It wasn't something I was too keen on returning to.

However, I am back now and with some updates I suppose. As some of you may now, I got a new horse back in November. He an I were not off to the greatest of starts once I started working with him. The first time riding him after getting him home, he let me test the sand within the first five minutes (idk, I probably deserved it). He did well for the rest of the time though, guess he just needed to get that buck out of the way first.

Sterling also has a bit of a trailering problem. The first time we went to trailer him after getting him home took two hours. It's not because he is afraid of the trailer (he was for maybe 30 minutes), but it's because he's both stubborn and smart. He realized rather quickly that if he could drag me out of the trailer, he didn't have to load. He'd get his front feet in, then go flying back when asked to go any farther. Finally, I got tired of fighting him, so I tied him to the trailer and let him fight it out with something that doesn't move. Then, once he was done throwing his tantrum, we tried again. It was then we realized that we needed to use leverage to our advantage.

I looped the leadrope around one of the trailer posts and then asked him to step in. Of course he tried to go backwards, but this time he couldn't. He got his front feet in and I moved the rope to the next post, repeating the process. He again tried to pull back at first, then climbed all the way in. Once he was in the trailer, he was completely fine. Trailering to come home, didn't take nearly as long. I tried twice to see if he would just walk in, and when he wouldn't we switched to the leverage method again.

He seemed to learn from that, because when we went to load him for the fair, I got the rope ready but before I could pull on it to ask him to step in he put his front feet in. Then he did the same thing after I moved it up a post, no fighting needed and he was loaded. He was a little hesitant on the way back and did fight me a little at first, but there was also skidsteers and other equipment driving around at the time.

The horse show was, for lack of a better word, interesting. It was a new experience for him, so I wasn't expecting too much. He did alright, and I didn't end up in the arena sand, so I call that a win. He actually did really well with everything that was going on. He wasn't super bothered by the rodeos or the loud music of the band when I took him out to graze while those were going on. The only time he ever jumped or reacted while I had him out was when a little kid ran up to him from behind before I could see or stop the kid. Thankfully he didn't kick the kid, but I thought he was going to the way he jumped and swung around. Overall, I'd say the fair went pretty well and it was a good learning experience for the both of us.

That's it for my update. I'll probably be sticking around for a while. Sorry for a random disappearance, but I'm back for now.