Happy October!

Lolz the random blue at the top of my blog still cracks me up.

I've got supper in the oven, and I'm looking for a way to waste time. I have several responsibilities I should be taking care of at the moment, but I simply don't feel like it.

Last Friday I went to Jenna's farm to work, and since she's still laid up I knew I wouldn't be having a lesson. So I asked her if I could work with Oliver, a new horse she acquired a month or two ago. Ollie is only halter broke, and has bad manners. He is extremely skittish and freaks out at just about everything. In fact, if you are a high-energy person, he will not let you near him. Thankfully, he likes me.
Anyways, after finished mucking stalls and sweeping out the barn, I longed Elsie and then went to fetch Jenna, who wanted to watch me work with Ollie and give me pointers.
I caught Ollie from the field and brought him to the grooming/tacking up place. He doesn't like to be groomed (!) so I had to be really careful and only groom a little at a time. I went down his neck and side, and then Jenna told me to go down his front legs too.
I started to, and felt Ollie's fear, but before I could do anything, I was cow-kicked in the back of my thigh. Twice. Ow.
Jenna yelled "Get out of the way get out of the way get out of the wayyyy!" bahahaha. So I did (fast), and waited for him to settle down while rubbing my sore thigh and almost fainting (my head is weird and thinks that it better shut down whenever I suffer any kind of mild trauma).
After he was a bit more calm I approached him again and stroked him for a while. Needless to say, I didn't finish grooming.
I brought him into the arena and began to free longe him. He worked off quite a bit of steam while we were doing this, and became much more relaxed after cantering for quite a while. My objective was to keep his feet moving and keep him going in the direction I wanted him to. If he turned around, I moved in his way and he was forced to turn back around. It was scary at times, but I only lost once. (He's a huge horse, btw, about 17hh.)
When he had calmed down quite a bit, I joined up with him. Joining up is a magical process where the horse begins to respect the person as it's leader, and wishes to join the herd. When the horse shows signs of respect and submission (lowering it's head, pointing it's ears to the inside, licking it's lips, etc.), the human stops making it run and turns his back on it. The horse then comes to the center of the arena, which is the human's circle and the horse can only come in if it is invited.
We did all this, and after he came into my circle, he followed me around everywhere, without being physically attached to me.
This doesn't mean that he will always do whatever I tell him to, but he does have more respect for me, and we have the beginning of a bond. I'm scared that I'm going to get very attached to Oliver...
Jenna plans to turn him into a hunter/jumper. I hope to work with him quite a bit, and maybe sometime in the future, if she keeps him long enough, he could be mine. But then I'm just dreaming now.

Even though he's skittish and flighty, I've never liked a horse as much as I like him. I think we've got something, and I don't want to let it pass me by.