A Soggy Start
The first several weeks since I brought Arrow home have been terrible. There were flash floods, rain, more flash floods, and more rain. I would have given anything to take Arrow to an indoor arena since we have access to several nearby; however, he needs some positive loading experiences before we trailer him again. We are unable to teach him how to load because the ground was saturated. We wanted to back the trailer up to this little bank in the pasture so the step up would be really small, but we couldn’t because it’s like a swamp out there and we would most definitely have gotten stuck. We finally had 3 dry days so I took advantage and went on a hack with Arrow. It looked strange, because I put on my cross country vest to basically take a walk around our property.
It wasn't the best hack because the bugs were really bothering him and if he itched, he would stop and flail his body around very dramatically. He is so tall and lanky that I thought we were going to tip over a couple of times. He was also very distracted because he discovered the cows in our neighbor’s field. He didn’t spook, but he was definitely interested more in the cows than he was in our ride. I took him on another hack the next day before my mom had to leave for a business trip and he was awesome! Since my mom went out of town, I didn't get a chance to do anything with the trailer. On the third dry day, I asked my dad to mow an area so I could make a small arena for ground work. I made an arena out of caution tape and standards. It wasn’t pretty, but at least it provided a barrier.
Arrow and me in the redneck arena
We hand grazed the horses around the arena and my mom’s horse was spooky, but Arrow didn’t notice the caution tape flying in the wind. I was all excited because I would finally be able to do some serious work with Arrow the next day. It didn’t work out so well, because the rain came back before sunrise. So basically, I haven't had the chance to do anything with him except for grooming because he kept rolling in the mud.