On Oct 7, Melissa and I went over to Jay's to pick up Angel. We had been hoping that someone would be there to show us what they had done with her as part of the agreement behind the breeding lease was that they would ride her for us - we are in desparate need of another really good quiet riding horse.
No one was around that we could see so we just went out to the pasture to catch her. She was very easy to catch and load which was a nice change.
After we got her home, we turned her out with Lucky in the small pasture. She could meet and greet with everyone else over the fence - which turned out to not be a great thing as she was rearing, striking and kicking at everyone so we just turned them out together. Things settled down really easy once the others realized that they couldn't just chase her off - that she would stand her ground.
Melissa then realized that she wanted to ride her so spent the next 20 minutes trying to catch her again. But managed to do it without too much trouble.
Once she was caught, Melissa tacked her up to go for a ride...but then the trouble started. Angel was BAD. She kept trying to bolt, refused to turn, and was just down and out hard to handle.
Melissa then put her back in the arena and I went out to try to help her figure out the problems. We tried riding on a loose rein and just using leg aides to turn - but that seemed to make her bolt. So we tried just using direct reining techniques but she would rear. When she did that, Melissa would push her into a lope to make her work harder for being bad. We tried to work on big circles and serpentine curves to see if it was just tight circles that were the problem...but it didn't seem to be.
During the week, Melissa rode her a couple more times with no better success. She switched saddles to see if that was a problem. Switched bits and even went to the sidepull (bitless bridle) to no avail. The one thing I am proud of though is through this Melissa is not giving up...when Angel would misbehave before, Melissa would just get off and put her away.
I called Jay to get an update from him as to what was done with her. Randy, Jay's partner, called and said that they hadn't really done much with her this year due to her having the foal, but he would be willing to come over and help Melissa with her and if Melissa wanted, he would take her back for 2 weeks or so and get her going for us again. He said it sounded to him like she had reverted to where she was last year when they picked her up.
Will keep you updated.
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