Quzqo's Driving Lessons Continue

Thu Jan 25, 2007

Who cares if it's 11 degrees, let's go to the unheated horse barn and run around behind an Arabian! It's FUN! It's a workout, that's for sure!

Just ground-drove Himself tonight, he's improving, but he discovered he can pull his same sneaky tricks as he does under saddle...like trying to ooze himself towards the center of the arena to STOP, and petering out in mid-trot because he's a lazy sod! BUT...he's learning his "Gee"s and "Haws", starting to turn left or right just by voice command, no tugging on the reins! That horse is so smart it's scary!

I tried my friend's harness circingle on him (that fit her horse-sized horse), at it was a bit big, but I could have snugged it up all right if I'd had tried and the leather wasn't so stiff and cold. He didn't seem to enjoy it though, I thought maybe it was too stiff on his back, and he walked around with his back sunk and head up. I swapped it for the nice training circingle, and he instantly rounded out and lowered his head. So much for that, but it's been stored in my friend's basement for years, so of course it's a bit crappy.

When we were done, I took him into the back barn where Bob's tack rooms are, since he said I could use any of his harnesses. My lord, the man has around 10-12 complete harnesses back there, from pony to draft horse!!! Most of them use collars though. I did find one horse-sized breastcollar harness, the circingle fit pretty good and had a wonderful maroon pad that looked SO snappy on a grey horse, so we tried that. Coos handled the breeching very well...he doesn't seem to care what dangles around his hind legs, LOL! That's a VERY good thing!!

The bridle for that harness was HUGE, and no way would that fit. Oh well, back to eBay I guess.

After I tucked Himself into his stall for the evening, I went to the downstairs barn and took another look at that jog cart. I re-measured it, and SOMEhow, it had GROWN since I last measured it this past weekend!!! SOMEhow the shafts had grown longer, and they were now 60" long!! SOMEhow they had also grown further apart, because there's a good 22" across the narrowest part!! (Quzqo's narrowest part is 16"!) Hmmmmm....it now seems that cart WOULD fit him!! HA, not that he's even going to SEE that cart for many many weeks, not 'til he gets the ground driving down pat, but still...

He looks SO darned cute trotting from behind though! I should get a pic!