I only come to the Sanctuary two days a week, but it seems that every time I’m here, someone asks me about Curly Sue. Her little stub of a tail is so unusual that it’s the first thing that catches people’s eye. And then they usually notice her curly coat. By that time, if they’ve walked over to her fence, she’s probably met them there and is pouring on the charm and wanting to make friends. It is obvious to anyone who meets her, whether they‘ve been around horses much or not, that she’s an exceptional horsenality. She’s just got a sweetness and friendliness about her that’s incredibly appealing.
And she’s coming along on her steering too. She still has the “druthers” about where she wants to go, but is getting a little less determined to go her way. We’ve been working a lot on her sideways maneuvers. It’s really important to me that my horses learn to move laterally away from my leg while riding. You never know when you might want to bend around a tree so your knee doesn’t get mashed, or move sideways away from the edge of a cliff. In my book, those are pretty important things: while riding, a horse who is calm and obedient equals safety and safety equals fun.
The other day Curly and I went on a ride with Linda and Chewy down here around the office area. You’d think it would be easier to ride near her own pasture area here she is familiar with the goings on than off in the wilderness where she’s never been before, but it seems that the opposite is true. Out on the trail, there aren’t very many scary things, it all just looks the same – sand, trees and sage brush, perhaps a bunny from time to time. But down around the offices there are people and dogs lurking behind cars or inside doorways just waiting to leap out and scare her. There are swamp coolers and buzzing power boxes and the 4 wheeler and piggies on parade. She’s really a pretty brave horse by nature and it doesn’t take her long to get over scary things, but she is much less confident around these kind of things than she is out on the trail or in her own pasture with a fence keeping all the unfamiliar things out. So I’ve decided that we need to get out around the busy world and help her get more confident around lots of real life people, animals and things. And we took Chewy along to be her steady-Eddie, but he was surprisingly unconfident around these things too, so they had to save each other.
As walked along the road I would ask her to move sideways toward or away from Chewy – of course, toward was much, much easier. There were a couple of times when she really resisted me and flat refused to move over, but she definitely improved as the ride went on. She also seemed to get braver and she really seems to enjoy getting out, she moves right along and is so interested in everything. She needs a lot more rides like that one, but she’s coming along and I’m proud of her. What a fun girl.
