The First Week

I had the last week off from work  which worked out great to be able to spend time getting to know Stitch.

And, I've got to say, he is a pleasure to work with.

His previous owner did a fantastic job of making him into a young man who is light and respectful to be around. He leads beautifully - I've barely had to give any tugs on the lead rope all week. He ties, stands to be groomed, is fine in the arena by himself, and has been adored by the other horses in his field.

He lives in a group of mostly bay geldings. It can be tricky figuring out at a glance which one is my bay gelding! (It's the dead looking one on the left.)

He's not perfect - there are a few things that need to be worked on. 

He's not great about having his ears touched, especially his left one. We've started clicker training to be able to get this sorted out. I am too short to deal with giraffes.

He's a bit sticky about picking his feet up. I think that this is mostly a difference in how I ask for it (squeezing the tendon) and how I suspect he was taught (pulling up on his fetlock hair).  The first few days he stiff-legged it and I had to kind of make him bend at the knee, but there has already been significant improvement.

He can be a bit tricky to catch.

I was warned that he sometimes didn't like to be caught, so went at it cautiously. The biggest problem hasn't been Stitch running away from me, but the other horses getting too close as I'm trying to put his halter on. They don't mean any harm, they're all just overly social, but their presence worries Stitch and then he leaves. It's been getting better as he gets more comfortable with me and I don't think it will be a problem for long.

And really, those have been the only problems to pop up so far.

Not that we did much this week. I had dug a hole I had to crawl out of on the first day when I zapped him not once, but twice on the end of the nose with a static shock. He was horrified, and I had to put a lot deposits into his trust bank to get back to a positive balance. Thankfully, he loves food and can be easily bribed for forgiveness. That meant that we spent most of week just trying to be friends.

He got to wear his new blanket because it was cold and wet for a couple of days. The blanket survived intact - here's hoping he's not a blanket destroyer!

I have a feeling that I could easily flood this horse by throwing a bunch of things at him and he would take it, but he would shrink away from me and it would erode any trust that has been created. So we're adding little bits slowly.

Today was the tarp on the ground. He walked up to it pretty confidently, but then scared himself by kicking dirt onto the tarp. His reaction was to take a step back, snort, and give the tarp the hairy eyeball. I asked him to walk forward, he took a couple of tiny steps with a release in pressure with each one, and within a minute he walked quietly across.

That seems to be how he deals with things so far. Stop, have a good look, take a few slow steps, then walk past giving it a cautious look, and all is forgiven. Little drama.

So far, I'm liking my new little man!