My Clever Pony

My horse is very smart, probably smarter than me and certainly smarter than I give her credit for.

Let me give you a couple examples. One was a serious epiphany for me, the other is just funny.

The funny one happened two days ago during a lesson. I was teaching my student how to get the horse to move laterally for the first time. We were working on a simple sidepass and a few turns on the forehand. Nothing terribly complicated.

Well, Cherry did NOT want to move sideways, and acted as if she barely understood the command. I thought, "Well, we haven't done this since last fall, so maybe she's rusty."

Eventually we got a few grudging steps sideways. Whereupon Cherry promptly threw a mini hissy fit and tried to leave the arena.

Alright, so my student wasn't a pro, it was her first time sidepassing, but seriously, Horse! Yeah, you work *so* hard, walking and trotting (poky trot, mind you) for 30 minutes twice a week. My heart just bleeds for your suffering.

So we get a couple more steps sideways and call it a day, with me secretly making a note to school her on lateral work before the next lesson.

I get on today (two days after the lesson) and after a nice easy warm up, I ask her to sidepass.

Guess what I get? Beautiful sidepasses going BOTH directions. I make her do a couple rollbacks just for kicks, and she does them perfectly.

Hmmm. She acted like the had no clue what to do in the lesson, and I get on and she bumps right over.

Me thinks the horse was dicking with my student! She knows perfectly well how to sidepass, she just wasn't going to do it.

I had a stern talk with her (I pretend she understands English) about going sideways when asked, even by the incompetent. She snorted all over my face, so she might have understood me after all.

Now on to the epiphany.

My horse has never really bucked. Her idea of a buck is to put her head up (yes, up) and hump her butt around while grunting. Obviously this does nothing to unseat the rider, and when disciplined she quits immediately.

For many, many years I thought my horse was just stupid and didn't know how to buck properly.

Then, I noticed something. She can bronc perfectly well out in the pasture and throws epic bucking fits when free lunged after being cooped up in a stall.

She can buck, and she can buck hard.

So why doesn't she do it right under saddle? Then it hit me.

She doesn't do it under saddle b/c she doesn't want to. When she bucks she has no intention of getting her rider off, she's just trying to tell you she's really pissed about something.

For all these years I'm thinking my poor little horse is an idiot b/c she puts her head up to buck, and all this time she's just trying to communicate and doesn't want to hurt me.

Wow. I definitely apologized for that one.

Cherry doesn't have a mean bone in her body, and has never, ever attempted to hurt a person. She's got several grumpy bones in her body apparently, but no mean ones. She's attempted to rattle, drag and totally ignore people before, but never hurt them.

Even when she does "naughty" or "scary" things, she's never tried to unseat her rider, plow over a person on the ground (drag to grass, yes, but never run over) or bolt out from under you. Sure she's bucked (with the head up), reared (never all the way up and never twice in a row), spooked and all those things horses do, but she takes great care not to harm you.

Damn, my horse is smart. Good thing she isn't mean or she'd have killed us all by now. In our sleep.