plan B

I got all ready to ride yesterday. It was rainy, gross, a little on the cold side (for summer in New England), but I was excited. I started currying Lily, and got all the seriously itchy spots. She was loving it! I then went to brush her off, and she wanted nothing to do with me. She backed up, turned around and went into the far corner of her stall. Apparently she did not want to go for a ride. Now, usually I am not one to let horses make decisions like this, however, it's a little different with her. Lily is a Morgan. Which means she is workaholic down to her very last bone. She comes to the gate every time, and stands quietly by the door of her stall when I tack-up. This horse loves to work. So when she turned her butt, I decided not to push it. I came up with a plan B: braid her mane over.

Considering that I've shown Lily and she's been braided before, this all seems fairly basic and easy...right? Not so much. Lily is one of those, "sedate until barely standing" type horses when you have to pull her mane. Just lightly touching her neck up by her crest will have her shaking her head. But, hey, she's gotta get over it sometime, and I decided that it would be then.

So, I went and got my black braiding yarn (I didn't have and rubber bands) and put Lily in the aisle; I have been working on ground tying, so I figured this would be a pretty good opportunity to practice. Then I couldn't find a bucket, which meant a refresher course in giving to pressure. I stood next to Lily, and gently tugged down on her halter, as soon as she relaxed down the tiniest bit I gave lots of praise and rubbed her neck. Less then three tries later I could get her head at the level of my knees...well, at least until I tried to touch her mane. Her head went flying up, she took a step backwards and gave me the evil eye; The, "how dare you! You know I don't like that!" kind of evil eye. So we went back to the beginning. I put her feet back where we started, and asked her to lower her head, she was not so fond of the idea this time, but she gave in.

30 minutes later along with a lot of head shaking, yelling, and praise, I had braided almost half her mane over. I gave up. She would put her head down, and although she was shaking, she wasn't moving her feet. Which was good enough for me. I put her back in her stall, got some treats to practice bowing. and said goodnight.