Hello, terrible twos!

Well, technically it's the terrible fours, as Aidyn is quickly approaching his fourth birthday on May 30. That combined with the spring sillies, his ever increasing fitness level, the new feed he gets at night, his new (and better fitting) saddle, and the very aggressive deworming schedule he just went through has left me with a new horse..one that runs from me in the field, runs from me under saddle, etc. Not sure who this horse is, but he's not the sluggish baby TB I brought home in August!

We've been doing a lot of riding at the Blue Barn just due to time constraints, and I've noticed Aidyn being a bit more rushy than usual...combined with lots of ducking behind the bridle. Nothing fun about flying around on a horse whose mouth you cannot feel...translate to Friday evening when we trekked over to Stone Place. We usually ride a bit through the cross-country field on our way to the outdoor, and Aidyn has recently decided that everything over there is scary...things that never bothered him before. So, naturally, he decides to take off on me for no apparent reason...he has *no* mouth when he's spooking, so thank goodness we hit a wet patch of ground and he decided it wasn't worth the effort to keep going. From that point on, he whinnied and spooked and ran forward and ducked behind the bridle and basically ignored every aid I gave him. Frustrated, I jumped off and attempted to longe him a bit...not a good idea with a particularly short longe line and an arena full of jumps. Got back on and just concentrated on getting a quiet trot around the arena. Every time I felt him start to relax, he would find something else to scoot away from. When another horse came in the arena, he mentally shut down and it's pointless to fight with him after that. Headed home with Jay-R and Katie, who had a great ride in the dressage arena. We got home, it got dark, I got a longe line (per advice from Katie who has dealt with the terrible twos before when Jay was 6) and proceded to longe him for about 20 minutes. We ended up leaving the barn quite late...but at least he finally paid attention to me and longed well.

After pondering his behavior the entire drive home, we concluded that a flash noseband might help a little bit with the control issue...and the head flipping crap that he has recently started. Longed him BEFORE our ride this time, he was quite laid back and listened to voice commands very well. Was halting quickly, which is really good considering he usually ignores the halt command as long as possible. Rode over to SP with Jay-R and another OTTB gelding named John (and his owner, of course) and things went well...got to the arena and he started neighing. Did my best to ignore it and concentrated on just relaxing my hands and posting nice and slow. Um, hello hunter horse. He stretched down and poked his nose out and trotted around like we were hacking. He was a completely different horse than the day before! Walked and trotted all over the arena, doing changes of directions, half-circles, etc...then began incorporating poles and small cross-rails into our path...just trying to get him used to stepping over things and not getting excited about it...he just trotted over everything without changing his trot rhythm at all. Then he stood and watched Jay-R for a little bit, and walked home like a gentleman.

So, I guess it's a good thing that my horse is not a psycho all of a sudden. He's just feeling good and isn't quite sure how to express himself...so for the time being we will be incorporating longing into every pre-ride ritual, and working a lot less with my hands and more with my seat. Hopefully this will encourage him to seek contact again and not run scared from my hands.

*sigh* He's such a goob.