This message is from: "Dagrun Aarsten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hello listers,
I had the pleasure of meeting Gail Russell from the fjord list today - Brigid and I drove up to Forestville, CA and had a great day. Meeting fjord people is always great, and Gail with husband Jim sure are no exception! We met their herd of horses, one sweeter than the other, great fjords and non-fjords. The one that particularly caught my interest was Odin, the grey 3 1/2 year old, great-looking little guy with an attitude. He just seemed like a very determined young man who wouldn't let any person tell him what to do. Gail let me go in and work with him and that proved a very interesting experience. At first, he seemed extremely unwilling to do anyting, and was showing quite a bit of aggression. He would move when asked, but sluggishly and reluctantly. It soon became clear that he was testing me out, and that he is an extremely smart horse. First he tried his "ignore human" trick. Welded to the ground. That didn't work, I kept bugging him to move. Then he tried the "scare human" trick, that included pinning of ears, nasty looks and an occasional threatening kick when I swang a lead rope at him to make him move. When that didn't work, he had other tricks up his sleeve. One was ducking into a stall to get away from me in the paddock, I would finally get him to trot and then he jogged into the stall, turned around and looked triumphant. That's when I understood I was dealing with exceptional brain capacity! After getting him out and making him trot around the paddock, he tried hiding in the stall again. So we closed the stall door to eliminate that escape route. He clearly looked around for other getaways but didn't find any and had to resign and move around a little. Then we put his halter on and worked on moving the shoulders sideways from both sides, then the hindquarters. At first he didn't have a clue (or pretended not to), but after a fraction of a second he "got it" and was really pleased with himself - finally some positive attitude! Then we practised leading a little, he certainly didn't feel like trotting away from the gate but he was dealing with another stubborn Norwegian (me) so decided to humor me after some argument. After a while we took him out to a round pen (lots of tempting apple trees on the way, but after a couple of half-hearted escape attempts he let me lead him past them). Loose in the round pen, he dived through the pipe panels to get to some apples on the other side. To do this, he had to stick his head sideways through the panel, then push on it with all his weight and either kneel down or spread his forelegs out like a giraffe. He knew exactly what to do to get to those apples and didn't worry a second about being stuck in a metal construction with his whole body. Very brave and focused, to say the least. After a well-deserved apple treat (for decent leading manners), we started working in the round pen. I didn't really get the explosive response I hoped for, he did move around but I guess I moved even more and fell for his "exhaust human"-trick! Outsmarted by a horse! The sun was a little too hot for my liking so Brigid took over a while while I dipped my purple face in a water trough for cooling down. Odin, on the other hand, didn't break a sweat. At that point. Brigid is the pro of teaching hoses to turn in the round pen, she taught my Quinn to stop and rollback instead of gallopping over people in his way, and her magic worked with Odin, too, but he was still kind of sluggish and slow. I would prefer a long lunge whip with a noisy plastic bag on the end, but got hold of a red flag on a stick that at least would make some noise. When I got this ready Odin was well into his apple eating ceremony again, hanging through the pipe panel and making his neck longer than you can imagine to get to the apples, I think he was willing to go through quite a bit of pain to get those apples! What a character! Trying to move Odin from his apple spot waving a red flag at him took some nagging, but in the end he got tired of getting poked in the butt by a red flag and decided to move. Then, suddenly something clicked and he moved forward with much lighter cues. He seemed to "get" that moving away from the flag was less of a hassle than getting nagged constantly. Or maybe he though "is this all? This is easy! I can do this! look! " Suddenly he was moving willingly forward, no more sour look on his face, and whenever I asked him to turn he would anticipate it by watching me and just jump around and go the other way. I had his attention!! Being inspired, I asked for canter, and he leaped right into it and even cantered past the "apple spot", which was the main challenge... Then stop and turn, canter the other way, suddenly he was floating forward and looked like a totally different horse. He really seemed to like the challenge, and he could read my body language and turn almost in anticipation. Magic moment! Then Brigid kept working on the turns at the walk, which he did great, even though he would sometimes back up many steps before understanding that he was supposed to turn. The turns seemed to work better at speed, but he was getting them at the walk, too. I see Odin like one of those kids in school that are really smart and don't get enough challenges - so they get bored and delevop an attitude/resistance? Does that make sense? Since he hasn't had much else to do for a while, he's developed all kinds of tricks to avoid work. And I can really relate to that, being lazy by nature. I'm slow to get started on something but when I get going I really enjoy it. I don't think he is mean at all (and he is really sweet when being handled and loves attention), he is just incredibly smart. Now is that a good thing? I'm sure it can be, if he gets enough challenges to keep him interested. It sure is fascinating, though. I've never seen a horse think so much, call it my imagination, but I could just see him calculating and planning his next move (when trying to avoid work) and watching me too se what's next (when he enjoyed the work). I've met quite a few horses through my life but never one quite as clever as little Odin. Give me a week and I'll teach him to solve differential equations. He is quite good at geometry already (If one apple is two feet from the fence but can only be reached at an angle, and another apple is three feet from the fence, which one should I go for? He never failed!) Still in awe of a fine fjord brain, Dagrun in San Jose, CA
