My comedienne

My trainer has been giving me some crap about L's manners lately. Seems she doesn't think twice about snatching up grass when she's being led to pasture and back. I swear she hasn't given me a whisper of a problem.

Then Sunday I'm leading her out to pasture and ... she drops her head and starts snatching mouthfuls of grass! So I whacked her. She ignored me. Completely. So I'm whacking her as fast as I can and I finally get her attention and she lifts up with a mouthful of grass. So I backed her up a few steps and she's staring at me with this mouthful of grass and a really hurt expression. She won't even chew her grass. I almost feel bad.

Now this grass has a root ball attached to it.

So I step in to continue leading her and...she starts knocking the root ball off of her grass. On my *shoulder*. She's just doing this whacka whacka whacka thing with the root ball on my shoulder. So I'm screaming at her and I'm whacking her and she stops and she's looking at me like she's thinking "what?".

By then I was laughing too hard to do a satisfactory follow up so I just finished leading her out and turned her loose. I'm sure she was thinking I was just being temperamental.

When handling L she has to believe you know what she's thinking. Oh, that's true for most horses but especially so for L. I'll go deeper into this when I chronicle some of our training - we're not near "finished" with our training, but basically, if she thinks you're not paying attention she'll be real quick to take advantage. And if she makes her move before you notice you're already at a big disadvantage.

It was very frustrating for a long time.