Our weanling stud colt is just a handful. I had forgotten what it’s like having a horse this young, but he is certainly a lot of trouble. The main problem is that he has got too much energy and not enough experience. Watching him careen around the farm full-tilt is entertaining until you see him run into something. Owning this colt is like having a teenager who just got his own drivers license and is anxious to demonstrate his skills. It’s exciting, it’s entertaining, it’s often hilarious…..but it’s also scary.
Take yesterday afternoon, for example. We had done some work around the farm, and as a reward, decided to take a horse ride. It’s harvest season, and the cornfields were just finished last week, and we put up electric fence around them and moved our cow herd out there last weekend. We thought it would be fun to ride out around the cows and see how the new mare acted around cows, and see how some of the new cows acted when they saw horses.
Saddling up, Cowboy Dad chose Cricket, since our son wanted to ride double with him. Our daughter likes riding my sorrel mare Daisy on the leadline, so I put her little saddle on Daisy. We chose to leave Milo home (which might have contributed to the events which followed, because he whinnied and screamed the whole time we were riding). I put my saddle on the new buckskin mare, and since Cowboy Dad already had his hands full carrying our son on the saddle in front of him and leading Daisy as well, I decided to lead the little stud colt from horseback, to hopefully keep him in line during the ride. He isn’t weaned yet, so we didn’t want to leave him at home and chance him hurting himself trying to follow after his mother. It seemed that the safest way to ride the mare was to take her baby along.
Everything started out fine. We walked along calmly down through the cornfield, enjoying the bright October sunshine and chattering amongst our little group. The kids looked so cute in their little black riding helmets, both very much at ease horseback, and the mares traveled at a contented walk, ears pricked towards the cow herd. The cows were suspicious and got up from their afternoon naps, walking quickly to get out of our way, then circling around behind us to follow part way in curiosity. We didn’t bother them, just rode past on our way down the road towards the river.
The little colt was doing well on the lead line, but it bothered him to see me (probably a big scary moving growth on his mother’s back), and he kept circling her at a trot, me passing the lead rope up and over my head to avoid getting us tangled up. The mare behaved incredibly well, stopping patiently when her baby refused to budge, starting back up willingly, and responding to a slight cue of my one-handed reining, which gave me great joy—this was only the third time I have ridden her. A few times the halter rope tightened behind her, and she didn’t spook at all—just raised her head a little bit to see what was going on back there.
But the ornery little guy just got more hyper the further we went, and soon he was bucking and tossing his head, and wanting to run past us and goof around. I had to let him go a couple of times, as his antics just ripped the lead out of my hand. Both times, I got off and he came right up to me and let me catch him again, and I would get back on his patient mother and we’d follow after the other mares.
But when we reached the far corner and turned back towards home, the colt just kicked it into high gear and I couldn’t hold the rope as it burned through my fingers. A couple of fancy bucks into it, he spooked at the lead rope under his belly, and just flattened out in a dead run towards home. It wouldn’t have normally been a problem, since he had been out and about in our farmyard many times, and the ground was level through the field. But we had just put up two strands of electric fencing between the field and the yard, and at the rate he was going, there was no way he would see it in time to stop. Fortunately, my husband had turned the fencer off when we started out, and the fence was made up of yellow poly tape with small wires laced through it. So it wouldn’t shock or injure the colt, but he would pretty much demolish the fence.
He ran through the fence, up around the corrals, whinnying for his mother, and then headed back towards us. We saw him jump the fence on his way back to us, and I was able to catch him easily and lead him home. His mother had been concerned when he ran away, but she didn’t spook or try to run off with me, which was fortunate. She seems to have a lot of intelligence, especially in bad situations. I led them both home and got them put back in the corral and got to work mending the fence.
It was broken and stretched out quite a bit, but we were able to untangle it and splice it together and had it working as good as new in twenty minutes or so. It could have turned out a lot worse, and I find that feeling all too often when working with horses. A good ride can turn sour in just a split second. A horse can go from a casual walk to a spook and a dead run with no warning. I don’t like that uncertainty, but it’s just something you deal with when you have a horse. And you just have to do the best you can with a situation and try to learn from it.
From yesterday’s ride, I deduced that that colt just needs weaned and kept at home with Milo during our next rides. This is the perfect time to be training that mare, and I learned that it is just as unsafe to take the baby along as it is to leave him at home in the corral whinnying and fussing. I’m hoping he gets attached to Milo just a little bit and learns to relax without the company of the mares. Hey—maybe Milo will learn a little of that same lesson!
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That was quite a read… but you are right. We have to learn to live with the unexpected and do the best we can, learning from our mistakes along the way. Horses can change on a dime, that’s for sure. I am so glad everything worked out in the end!