“Hello,
My name is Baby Seabiscuit. And I see Dead People.”
It’s not unusual to be cantering along in one direction and
instantaneously…………
find myself headed the OTHER direction.
Sometimes there is absolutely nothing there when this happens………
But the most common cause of these sudden reversals is that there is a person standing near a jump or the arena railing…………. unfortunately for my ghost-seeing-pony, we have something in eventing called jump judges……………..
And Baby Seabiscuit finds them terrifying.
The very first time he unloaded me in the arena at home I was coming through the corner, and the person he loves and adores (who feeds him every morning) strolled up to the arena to watch. Baby Seabiscuit came around the corner, saw him, and immediately spun a 180……….Bad Eventer ate dirt………
I had never really noticed just how many times he took issue with someone standing around until our first outing this year.
At home I ride by myself, so there is almost never an audience.
But a couple of weeks ago we went to a schooling day and combined test. The first day of cross country schooling was a huge success. Of course there were NO PEOPLE on course and Baby Seabiscuit bravely conquered every obstacle.
ON day 2 dressage did not exactly go well (see I see Dead People – Part 1 for details)
After our VERY exciting dressage attempt………I seriously considered scratching before stadium.
After much tequila consideration I ventured over to the stadium ring and decided we’d give it a try. He actually warmed up reasonably well (there were no people standing around warm up.)
But when we attempted to start our stadium round…… there was a nice volunteer standing a few feet away from the first jump.
Baby Seabiscuit was certain the man was dangerous and I couldn’t go near him.
After spinning and bolting and rearing the nice man walked away from the jump and I was finally able to start the round.
The jumps were definitely not the issue….. Baby Seabiscuit wasn’t going anywhere near that man.
I’ve decided that is my next homework, convincing Baby Seabiscuit that PEOPLE aren’t dangerous.
I’ve been bribing volunteers to stand around (with treats) in areas that normally he would spook from………
We’ll see if it helps!
This is really bizarre to me. Have you ever encountered something like this before?
It's not unusual for young or inexperienced horses to be leery of jump judges, esp if you ride alone at home and they've never seen people hanging out around the jumps. I've had several young horses over the years that had to get used to it. However, none were quite as determined or exuberant about running away as Baby Seabiscuit.
Some horses are just wired to high levels of danger. My older horse, who is 11 this year and has been ridden pretty consistently since she was 3, regularly throws her toys out of the pram when people appear unexpectedly.
Some horses just have the crazies, hopefully you can help convince Baby Seabiscuit through the magic of treats & bribery that he is a big brave horse that nothing can actually hurt him…we'll except for those dinosaur vulture babies but i digress
well now that you have a reason, you can work on it. 🙂 I love the 'naughty' comment.
Cracking up at the scary man in cowboy hat pictures! Maybe practice with your people holding and talking into walkie talkies too? Sometimes they make very scary noises!
Great idea! Good luck with the desensitizing/bribery with treats!
poor Baby Seabiscuit… those jump judges are awfully scary!! good luck !
My horse does this too! I'm going to be following this closely. He also reacted really well to the clicker training tip from you with this same horse. He's super people friendly, very broke, but if someone walks right up to him or stands still in the arena, he freaks out. Luckily he's nowhere near as athletic as Baby Seabiscuit or I might have bit it while he went skittering across open fields and arenas in response…
It's rough being a baby seabiscuit!
Man, I wish I could stick in the saddle like you do!
I'm with Heather N.! – it's amazing how you sit out those U-turns, airs above the ground, and walking around on hind legs episodes! A core of steel? Just as amazing is that you have stuck with Baby Seabiscuit in spite of all that athletic melodrama.