The Road to the Tevis Cup, Post #5: The manure fork incident

My first major training gaffe–otherwise known as the manure fork incident–with Fantazia happened about three weeks after I brought her home. Those first three weeks, she would occasionally poop in the arena. Thank goodness she doesn’t seem to do that anymore, because I would have to pick it up (see my post on Arena Etiquette if you are wondering why).

One day, my boyfriend watched me get off, get the manure fork from where it lives, propped just outside the gate, pick up the poop, and sling it over the wall. He said, it’s easier just to do it from your horse. Then he rode his older gelding over to the wall next to the gate, reached over, grabbed the fork, and carried it around before putting it back.

The next day, sure enough, Fantazia pooped. I rode over, reached over the wall, and pulled the manure fork over. In my defense, I’d been getting the mail EVERY DAY, carrying boxes, plastic bags, even reading the newspaper from the saddle.

Mail is not the same as manure forks. And she’s lived outside most of her life, so possibly she hasn’t been up close and personal with a manure fork. I know she hasn’t since I’ve had her. She walks out of her main pasture to the manure pile pasture to poop (what a nice house-trained horse).

It was clearly a manure fork monster

Fantazia let me lift it over the wall, but when I tried to lower it all hell broke lose. In retrospect, I should have stood it up so the fork was near my body. I probably shouldn’t have had really LONG reins. But, I ended up pulling the fork towards her shoulder (what I would do with a garrocha pole). We leapt sideways in a spiral of jumps and snorts for about 10 seconds until I gave up and dropped the fork. She wheeled to face it and snorted hard (that fear snort they do). Several times.

I got off and picked up the fork (many more snorts). Letting her follow it as I walked, I carried the manure fork to prop against the sprinkler in the middle of the arena. (It helps to let horses follow scary things. In theory.) I knew my work was cut out for me.

Training, aka undoing my mistake

I’m going to admit right now that I haven’t fixed it… yet. I’ve had better things to do (ride up and down steep hills, for example). And it’s not easy going. Had I started out the right way (not pulled a scary monster over the wall), Fantazia would no doubt have accepted me carrying the manure fork within a few minutes. But once she was afraid of it…

Immediately after dropping the manure fork, I got off and — once Fantazia calmed down enough to allow me to get near it –picked it up. I allowed her to look at it, and then dragged it in front of her to walk to the poop that started it. Allowing horses to follow a scary object often lessens their fear.

If following the manure fork lessened Fantazia’s fear, she must really have been terrified!

After picking up the poop and tossing it over the arena wall, I carried the manure fork to the center of the ring, where I could lean it up against the sprinkler (encased in concrete). I mounted, and proceeded to train.

It took ten minutes to be able to touch the manure fork with my left hand. It took another twenty to touch it with my right hand (that being the side of the original manure fork sin). Before I left the arena, I could pick up the fork and move it a few inches around the sprinkler casing. With my left hand, i could move it all the way around without Fantazia moving away. With my right hand, I could move it a few inches.

That took over an hour…

Since then I’ve only worked with the manure fork in the arena twice. We haven’t made much progress. It’s pretty boring and I don’t ride in the arena every day.

I’ve also started using the manure fork near her in her shelter. Fantazia has spent most of her life living in pastures. Even if she remembered her first few weeks of stall life, she probably didn’t see a manure fork… Foaling is generally done on straw, and for that you need a pitchfork.

Pitchforks do not look like manure forks. So I’ve started to expose her to a manure fork–the one we keep near the pens to clean with–every day.

We clean the poops out of the covered area in the horses’ pastures every morning. However, since Fantazia is house-trained, she doesn’t see it much. By house-trained, I mean she rarely poops anywhere near her shelter. She goes outside of the immediate area, generally to where we dump the manure to compost and spread (we leave the gate open to her pasture). Fantazia is very clean. She never pees anywhere near her shelter, but goes way up the hill to where there s grass on soft dirt.

No, I haven’t fixed it yet.

But I am hoping that daily exposure to a manure fork will have its effect. Sooner or later we’ll have a post-hard-workout day when we need to just walk (and stop) a lot. Then I will work on picking the fork up from the saddle again.

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The Road to the Tevis Cup, Post #4: How to calculate the grade of hills

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The Road to the Tevis Cup, Post #6: Week 8 Training Update