Failed experiment

I tried something that didn't work out today. But I looked at it as a scientific experiment, and failure is just as valuable as success.

Stats: Mines without the Mines, 4.12 mi in 1:21, average 3.0 mph, max 10.2 mph. I don't think I've ever explained the whole Mines trail, and it's important to the story. We walk down the road for almost a half mile, then head off on a singletrack sandy trail, through the sagebrush and over some small hills, for about 3/4 mile. Then we go down a very short but very steep slope into a canyon, head out for another half mile, then turn back towards home up another canyon. The canyons are wide enough for two horses abreast, with moderate to deep sand footing. The canyon gradually becomes jeep trails, the same sandy footing, and we pop back out at the end of the road a half mile from home.

Dixie has gotten so much braver, but she's still very slow for the first mile or two headed out. She'll walk forward, kind of hesitantly, for a couple hundred yards, then she has to stop and stare. After she stares for a bit and maybe sighs, she'll go forward again... for another hundred yards. This goes on for a mile or two, no more, when she somehow becomes resigned to her fate and snaps into get-r-done mode and we chug down the trail.

It seems to me that everybody who's really successful at endurance (or CTR, foxhunting, eventing, or even dressage) talks about having a horse who loves its work. In outdoorsy sports, that a means "let's go see what's down that trail" attitude, not an "oh jesus I think that rabbit's looking at me" attitude. Nobody ever acts like maybe their horse just wants to stay home, so I'm hoping we all gloss over those days when the horse would rather stand in the pasture and fart. So I'm operating on the assumption that as Dixie gets fitter and gets more and more successful (i.e. not scary) rides under her belt, she'll start looking forward to our work.

And it's not like she's really resistant, anyway. After I tack Dixie up, I unclip the lead rope from her halter and stand on the tailgate of my truck, and she walks over so I can mount. She just has to be encouraged to head out and face the trail. Not forced or bullied, just gently encouraged. Same in the arena - she's perfectly happy to let me climb on her back and then let's just stand here ok?

Anyway. She's very stop and go in the early part of a ride. She's not extremely nervous anymore - when she stops, her head stays pretty low and she's still breathing normally. Usually, I let her stand until she flicks an ear back at me, then I ask her to walk forward again. Today, I decided to try to push her to keep walking forward.

We pushed on (I felt like I was nagging, which I really don't like to do) through the sagebrushy part of the trail. When we got to the scary dropoff into the canyon, she STOPPED. She wasn't tired, just nervous. It felt like she was really getting panicky. It took 20 minutes of me just sitting and her just looking around before she decided we were ok to proceed. I never got off or let her turn towards home, and she never got really upset - she just needed to stand. And pushing her til she mentally HAD to stop ended up being slower than letting her pause on her own. Experiment failed!

Eventually, Dixie relaxed and we headed on, quite peacefully. She wasn't particularly excitable coming home - we did a bit of trot/rack/canter on the straight jeep trails, and she didn't try to bolt on me. She did cross-fire on me at one point. We were cantering past a tree, and she spooked at it, jumped sideways, and came back down on the wrong lead or feet or whatever. I asked her to slow down, and she dropped back to a rack.

So today's question: Did your horse always love her job? Did he or she eventually grow into it? I think she's still improving, so I'm not too worried, but I do wish she loved heading out on the trail as much as I do!