Background story on Harvey.

Well I promised I would post this a while ago but what with one thing and another I haven't really had time to sit down and thinnk it through. This is still a rush-job - it's 7.30 am so I may end up adding bits later but this should give you the gist.
He was supposed to be an eventer ( I was told this by 2 different people) but threw some sort of spazzy fit when he was asked to go through a puddle, this apparently ended when he fell over and injured his leg. He got a steel plate in his leg which ended his eventing career before it even got started, was written off by the insurance company and got the appropriate recovery time before being donated to the riding school where he stayed for somewhere in the region of 10 years ( give or take).
Now this is ( or was) a big riding school BHS and ABRS approved etc etc and they had a lot of horses and ponies. They had a system whereby horses could be turned out/brought in with a minimum of staff - basically a corridor arrangement where horses were turned out of stables into the aisles and made their own way to the field with the staff member following to close the gate and reset the corridor for the next lot. I worked there for a while and the system worked brilliantly ( I use a simplified version of it myself). Bringing them in is the opposite with the horses walking in and going straight into their own stables and someone going along and shutting the doors. So, no use of headcollars and no leading involved. Grooming and saddling happens in the stables so no tying up. Hosing and farriery involve a person holding the horse.
So you see there was never any time where he needed to be tied so naturally he never learned it.
Most of his actual work involved being in an arena with a group of other horses so I think that makes his clinginess, spookiness and general lack of confidence quite natural. He never needed it so he never learned it.
When I first got him he was a pain to catch - you just couldn't. You'd end up following him around the field endlessly until you could get him cornered ( and the only way to do that was to remove the other horses first and have an assistant. Catching him singlehanded was nigh on impossible. I did get fed up with this and we had a couple of sessions of me chasing him around the small field, keeping him moving until I wanted him to stop, had to do this a couple of times but now he is catchable at least.
You could say that he has a lot of issues but really I think he's institutionalised. He's the big boss in the field but won't go in front on a hack - he gets all stressed and spooky - but he will try to bite the horse in front to make it go faster and has managed to tread on heels too. If you take him in front he instantly becomes hesitant, slows down and starts wavering ( that is actually an improvement as he used to just stop dead) He is a dream horse for the farrier ( with someone holding the rope - he just dozes off - I'm sure the person holding the rope isn't even necessary, that you could just park him in the middle of the yard and leave him there), perfect gentleman to clip ( even if it does involve standing on a crate) and easy to work around in the stable.

Discussions with Harvey, a change in the weather, the return of George and numerous dead fish....

Harvey does not like me touching the top of his head, it makes him move backwards, this has always been an issue and something we have just dealt with, It makes grooming and bridling difficult but at least in a stable he backs into the wall and that's about it. Clipping and bridlepaths usually tend to involve someone standing on a beer crate. On the yard it's a different story. I have read somewhere that the correct method is to place one hand on top of the head, one on the nose and wait. Yeah well, that didn't work - maybe it would have if I was actually tall enoough to do it - I'm 5 ft 7 and even standing on tiptoes and stretching straight up like some sort of demented ballerina in boots I still can't reach.I can, however, reach his forelock or scratch the base of an ear - great he goes backward so I lead him forward and try again, same result. Now I'm sure this activity would please my physiotherapist but personally I wass finding it boring and unproductive, circling the yard and tying back up produced the same effect so I figured it was about time to introduce Mr Schooling whip. Right hand goes up, Harvey goes back and WTF ?? comes back forward again. It's times like this when I wish I had 3 arms. A few of these back and forwards episodes and he seemed to get the gist - it's nicer to get your head scratched than to get your butt prodded with the business end of a schooling whip.
I had to reinforce that again today but I expected that. He now has clean ears which is a bonus.
The rain which had been threatening all Tuesday morning decided to go for it just as I brought Fally out, he looked at me like " Are you serious ?" lol, nope, I wasn't THAT serious at any rate. I turned them all out and went home and spent the afternoon fiddling about with George.
I should explain that George is actually my PC - recently resurrected from some sort of cyber-death and has been sitting under the desk waiting for me to actually find time to do something about him. Well that time was yesterday afternoon and, apart from finding that my light up USB hub has apparently gone walkabout ( probably in protest at George's prolonged absence), all is well there and I am back up to speed. I even managed to import my bookmarks from the stand-in machine. No doubt I will find a few things I forgot to install (Flash player, Adobe reader, Yahoo messenger etc) but that's all just minor details - the main stuff is in now and the stand in can finally stand down.
Recieved an alarm call just as we were about to go to get the horses in, Sy's heater had packed in and half his fish were dead - could he bring the survivors here - okay, I said, but where will they go ? One of my tanks is mysteriously acidic and the other contains the piscine version of The Terminator ( it kills anything that happens to be smaller than it is), my daughter said they'd go in her tank so I said yes, whatever. He turned up with a coffee jar with three very sad and sick looking fish that all died within half an hour. My daughter somehow managed to lose her phone in all the confusion and, of course, it has a flat battery so we can't even find it by calling it - naturally it has ALL her phone numbers and she uses it as an alarm as well as a watch so she's totally lost and freaking out about it *head-desk*, I suggested if she cleans her room she may find it...........

An interesting weekend part 2

Sunday was drizzly and started with an irate husband who'd tried to tax his new car only to find that the DVLA website was offline and a general state of confusion over cars and lifts and who was supposed to be phoning who. I think it turned out that I was supposed to be phoning and giving lifts but I'd managed to totally forget everything - that's the problem with having dynamic memory ! Shut down for sleep and it's all gone !!
The drizzle was a total downer and we spent some time in a Spring-clean of the garage and tackroom before even attempting to do anything horsey. An odd impulse led us to lunge Fally ( not a task for the faint hearted as he's not very good at it and doesn't cope well with turning) at one point I had Gemma running behind him waving a crop over her head !Anyway - here's a pic of my beautiful boy.

An interesting weekend.( part one)
The farrier visit was fun ( as expected) they managed to mess about and not allow enough time - I ended up driving my daughter to the yard at 1.30, giving her the keys and wishing her good luck. By the time I was half way home the farrier had phoned me to say he'd be there in 10 minutes. To give her her due she did manage to tice Fally into his stable with promises of food but then he barged her out of the way and legged it back up the field. They eventually managed to get them all in just in time for the farriers to arrive.
Saturday got off to a calm start - no kids in sight ( no surprise there) but good company at any rate and we had the usual gossip session before going across to the yard.
My friend Gemma had a riding lesson ( hmm - best to explain here - there are 2 Gemmas and to make it even more confusing they both ride !) So, Gemma (Nevergrowup) had a riding lesson and they went out on a hack - now normally this would be a good thing but this time they met the motorcyclist from Hell - he either had no brains or no brakes ( actually I suppose he could have been brakeless AND brainless) whatever - he managed to cause absolute chaos with the school hack, kids and ponies everywhere and Gemma's horse reared, spun and catapulted her into a hedge. To make matters worse she got the reins wrapped round her finger in the confusion so when she turned up at the yard ( having driven) she had what apeared to be a broken finger. Gemma (Shamrock) shot off with her to get it x-rayed and, as luck has it, it's not broken just badly sprained. They have, however, treated it in the same way as they would if it was broken - she now has 2 fingers strapped together which makes life interesting for her to say the least. No riding or martial arts for at least 3 weeks and as her job is about 98% keyboard orientated she's going to have fun with that too- so here's a bunch of flowers to cheer her up !
( and a jar of homemade Marmalade - I know you'll find someone to open it for you !)

Dogs, transitions and the dreaded green car

Yesterday I decided it would be a good idea to take my dog up to the lunge arena with Holly and (hopefully ) get him to lie sensibly by the fence while she worked. If I could do this it would at least cut out one of the episodes of running to the house depositing dog etc.
The problem with the dog is that he is clingy and gets separation anxiety and starts chewing himself when he's away from me for any time. Basically he's Emo Puppy !
So he was thrilled to come with me but also would not lie by the fence - he had to sit inside the circle with me ( as had alrready been predicted he would do). He was pretty good and Holly couldn't have cared any less than she did about him being there apart from giving him some very dirty looks when he couldn't resist the urge to sniff her hocks.
What is it with dogs and horse's hocks ?
I did make a discovery early on and that was that Holly is either very bad at transitions or selectively deaf. I spotted a stone on the track and called her to walk so I could go out and move it but she just kept trotting - eventually I had to walk out to her to get her to stop. You can guess what the focus of the rest of the session was !
Neo went into the house while I dealt with Harvey ( just in case of any shenanigans) but Harvey turned out to be 100% better than Holly. We finished off with the walk along the private road again and when we got to the end he was all for turning around and going straight back - hmm, okay, so we did a couple of circles there and then stood and watched traffic for a bit first.
My morning's ride was once again haunted with text messages and phone calls and a flying spook at a ( OMG!) green car that we have seen a billion times before. I probably confused the hell out of the old lady at the bus stop by turning multiple circles in the road with Fally snorting and huffing at this parked car untill he finally decided it was really a boring car and was stopping him from going home. It was just after this that my phone rang and I snapped "Hello" into in a rather impatient way. It was Craig telling me I could collect my computer ( oops - don't want to upset him).
I did apologise to him later when I went into the shop to finally collect my long-absent machine. It cost less than he'd quoted too so I can forgive him for phoning at inappropriate times.
Today I have decided is a day off as far as working horses is concerned. There's far too much other stuff going on. Also it rained which means that the ramp and arena are slippery and I don't have to feel guilty about grooming and turning them all out.
Today the farrier is coming, I have to shop ( vast amounts of dog food etc) and I'll be visiting my grandson. The farrier called to say he'll be late - about 2 instead of the usual 11, this messed things up some until my daughter and her sometimes-kinda-wannabe-boyfriend volunteered to step in and see to that for me as it just so happens to be their day off.
This helps me out a lot - so why am I feeling resentment ? Why do I suddenly feel like I'm sharing something I don't want to share ??
Also my tendency to micro-manage stepped in, they are both perfectly capable of bringing in and hosing off 3 horses, they know the farriers and they know where everything is so then why did I suddenly have to start explaining everything in minute detail including telling her multiple times NOT to tie Harvey ?

Today ( Wednesday)

Back on my own again and no fog.
I took the precaution of closing all gates, wearing hat, gloves and toetectors ( of course) and making sure that someone knew where I was and what I was doing.
All I can say is Wow, despite starting off by peeing on the track as soon as we got in there ( nice one Harv!) He lunged even better than yesterday and I finished off by taking him for a walk staight to the end of the private road and back. No problems there even though we were followed all the way back up by a van which was trying to deliver a washing machine to one of the neighbours ! He even behaved when the delivery men stopped me by the gate to ask directions.
Once Harv was away I went out on Fally and had an interesting time recieving multiple phone calls and text messages (and dirty looks - apparently it's not the done thing to trot past someone with the Dr Who theme tune playing in your pocket !)

Harvey on the lunge