Who's The Boss?

I want my sweet baby horse back. 

My current horse is a menace.

As I recently mentioned on the blog, Stitch has been having a lot of 3-year old feelings. The whack that he got one night has mostly fixed the biting, also helped by the moratorium on cookies being dispensed. 

However, the pawing has been getting worse. Actually, his whole behaviour while in the crossties has gotten worse. 

The pawing has become consistent. Doesn't matter if I'm standing there grooming him, his front legs are moving. They came into contact a few times with my leg one day so I've been carrying a dressage whip and getting after him if he paws while I'm working with him. At moments it helps, at moments it doesn't.

Today, I found out some information that may partially explain some of the behaviours.

Stitch has been performing a coup d'etat. 

Apparently, over the last couple of weeks, he has been seen moving up the ranks in the group of geldings that he lives with. He has recently been seen pushing around the established leader, a big draughty tank of a horse. 

The kid has gotten bigger, stronger, and a huge ego.

It kind of ties in with his behaviour escalating over the last few weeks.

The last couple of days he's been really bad after he had his food. 

Our routine is that he comes in, gets parked in the cross-ties, gets stripped of blankets, a quick brush, into the arena for whatever I do that day, back to the cross-ties, noms, blankets on and head out. 

I was wondering if I needed to start changing up the routine. I had been thinking that he was overly eager to go out because he always got gate cookies when he went out, but I've reduced that so that shouldn't be as much a factor. 

However, after hearing about his power struggle, I'm wondering if part of his hijinks is due to his eagerness to go back out to his buddies, where it's probably party all day every day. He has been sticky about leading forward when I've brought him in, stopping every few strides and planting, not wanting to leave his friends. 

He was really bad yesterday about getting his blanket on, to the point that I took him into the arena to finish it as he kept almost trying to sit against the back wall. He has also started barging past me when I undo the crossties. Like, full-on nose against his chest, set his neck, see ya with me water-skiing behind him.

I am not impressed.

The rope halter had only slightly more impact than the leather halter, which had zero stopping power when he set his neck. The chain lead is getting dug out next. 

Unfortunately, the way that the barn is set up is not helping. The area in front of the grooming cross-ties is not very wide, so when he barges out I quickly run out of space to maneuver before I'm running into shelves and saddle racks. I have to be able to catch him before he barges out. 

I'm going to start with changing up the routine. He can get fed early, then groomed, a bit of work (he was momentarily better after being lunged today, until he got fed and blanketed), a blanket on, and back into the arena for a bit of ground work, then, if weather permits, maybe some walking around the yard. 

So far this hasn't snuck into the arena, and he's been really, really good in there. He actually doesn't want to go back into the barn when we're done, so I'm also wondering if being in the cross-ties is stressing him out.

On my way home from the barn, after thinking that I want to sell him and get a 10 year old who should be well past this stage, I reflected back on my other horses, who all had phases during which they weren't fun to deal with. Phantom was pretty well always good on the ground, but for the first couple of years we had some terrible rides under saddle. Cisco was good in the barn, but a stressy mess in the arena.

Before them was Farly. I got him when he was 6, lost him at 19. I think that for all that time, he was always the boss horse in his turnout situation. He never had to work on it, he just seemed to give off vibes that said he was the boss and the other horses accepted it.

The first couple of years that I had him, he had atrocious ground manners. He was a confident horse who was very dominant, and we spent a lot of time working on stopping immediately and backing up and moving out of my space. He also spent most of the first couple of years doing the idiot dance in the crossties, especially if he was in the barn by himself.

We got over it, and he received compliments from cowboys on his manners, but man, there were days.

Is Stitch starting to show some dominant traits like Farly? 

I'm really hoping that this will start to get better with a couple more weeks of sorting out the hierarchy and getting back to work (it's finally going to start warming up at the end of the week) and that it doesn't take the next two years of constantly getting after my horse to make him a solid citizen again. It can be exhausting to deal with.