July 13th, 2009
Rajah the Draft When Rajah first came into our lives, we decided that despite his blood (he is a full draft horse, with a Percheron mother and a Shire father), he would learn all sorts of wonderful things, like how to shake hooves, how to carry a dressage rider, how to jump, and how to Noust. We taught him all these things, but there still lurked in the back of our minds a thought. Would he take to pulling, as is the tradition of his breed? We experimented with an old carriage harness, and tied a sled to the back so that he could pull us over snow or sand. But then a friendly neighbor offered to loan us a full harness set-up, and even showed us how to put it on. For the first time, Rajah was ready to pull. Getting the feel for things. Soon he was hooked up to the arena drag, and we slowly added weight. Though the neighbor assured us that the weight was insignificant to Rajah, Rajah had to complain, acting as if he were hauling a ton of bricks.
Soon, however, he was pulling my weight as well, and
we managed to do a rather incomplete job of dragging the arena smooth.
There is a joy in teaching a horse new skills. And they seem to enjoy it as well. When we first began teaching tricks, the book stated that tricks are most useful because they teach your horse how to enjoy learning. And there really seems to be something to that. At the farm where we board our horses, the horses run up to the gate whenever it's time to ride or train. (At other farms we've worked at, you usually have to go out and catch your horse, often spending inordinate amounts of time chasing them around). Here, they seem to look forward to working together. We've still to get a successful full drag of the arena, but it will come. And now it's just a matter of deciding what skill we'll teach the horses next . . .
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