Who's more stubborn? Me or thee?

Beautiful day today. A bit of a chill in the air, but beaming sunshine and blue skies, so very pleasant.

Max is back in his lightweight rug, as he was starting to shed wearing his medium. I think we’ll stay with the lightweight for now, help him keep his figure trim (he has a tendency to “curvy”) and hopefully I can save him from the grass muzzle come March/April. My YO is pretty hot on them, and I hate to see Max wearing one, especially when he’s never shown any signs of laminitis, despite living out 24/7 for the first four years of his life, the first three with no exercise, and the fourth with fairly light work.

According to popular opinion, he’s got that “laminitic look” about him. It’s the crest, you see. Cresty neck, it’s a dead-giveaway. The same cresty neck, presumably, that is part of the Norwegian Fjord conformation.

Laminitis is definitely something I don’t want to enter Max’s life, though, and I know it pays to be careful. I will check his feet, I will feel digital pulses, I will watch for all the signs, but I will try to spare him the muzzle if it can be done. His poor face was so rubbed last Spring by the danged thing, and he becomes a bit of a hooligan too, just desperate to get his head down at any opportunity. A muzzle will undo a lot of our good work, and I’m not convinced that it’s necessary.

So, the plan is 20 minutes of ridden trot work every day to get him nice and fit, along with our regular stuff. I’ll keep that up, too, when the Spring grass arrives, and hopefully, vigilance and exercise will be enough.

Today was our first day, and Max is not impressed. We went into the school first of all, and shared first with Turbo, and then with Mini Me, which reduced us to half the school to work in. Not ideal trotting Max on smaller circles when his stifle lock is playing up, but he was fine. One stumble from the front end, but that’s because he was being a lazy git, not picking his feet up.

The whole thing was a struggle today, in fact, with Max quite distracted by the Other Horses, and me getting frustrated by his feckless attitude and distinct lack of interest in anything I might be asking of him.

We got into a right strop at one point

“Max, pay attention!”

Head shake.

“Won’t.”

“Max! You know how to do this.”

“Forgot. My bad.”

“MAX! Get up, you fool!”

“Sorry, did you say ‘stand’?”

We were like that for about half an hour, mostly trotting and bickering amongst ourselves. We stopped for breaks, I let him stretch his neck down and walk, then gathered back up to try the other rein, but today we got no zing.

Left the school and decided to take him down the lane to see the geese to finish things off.

Started off well enough, until we met Other Horses grazing in the field across the lane. We see them pretty much every day, of course, but today they seemed extremely interesting.

Managed to get Max moving on without too much trouble and was just allowing myself a little smile at the thought that this was going to be a good end to our session, when a car came up behind us. The nearest lay-by was right behind us, so rather than trot Max on to the next one and make the driver wait, I turned Max back to allow the car to pass.

Fool that I am!

Our ten minute walk down the lane and back turned into a 30 minute drama. Turning (and turning and turning until he got tired of turning), planting, refusing to move forward, then eventually moving one ickle baby step at a time, pretending to be frightened of a clump of mud on the side of the road.

And yes, I do mean “pretending”. There was no real fear in him. He had had enough, he could see home, and decided that somewhere along the line, there was some mule in his lineage, and today was a good day to show it.

I was tempted to get off and move him on in hand, but decided it wasn’t the best option because in this circumstance, he truly didn’t need me to be his security on the ground.

So we sat. I was lucky there wasn’t traffic because that probably would have forced me to the ground.

Just sitting worked, though. I didn’t speak, I didn’t cajole, I just sat and waited him out, with the occasional quiet, “Walk on, Max”.

“Nope.”

Wait some more. “Walk on Max.”

“Nuh-uh.”

It worked, eventually. Max got bored, gave in and we slowly made our way up the lane, had a look at the geese, and then went back home again at proper walking speed, Max with a spring in his step at last.