New project

Once Nick died, my employer began to look for free lease horses for me to borrow for a year. I agreed to go and look at one of them yesterday. She is a mare, 4 yrs old, failed racer, thoroughbred.

We got there and I wasn't impressed with her manners and temperament. She seemed jumpy and rude. We found out she was being fed working horse food when she wasn't being worked. The owner rode her and we were still not encouraged. Eventually the initial prance and disobedience left her and the lady got off.
I figured I would ride her since we had come all this way (an hour and a half) so I hopped on. I walked her round a bit, telling her that a walk was plenty and we don't need to trot everywhere. After I got off, my friend hopped on because the mare had been a lot calmer for me then for the first girl. My friend rode her and realized she is very smart and can be taught things and is a quick learner. We decided to take her home for 2 weeks to see what she turns out like on calmer feed and time and effort.

The first thing we taught her yesterday was that people stopping cars and walking around floats don't mean she is about to be unloaded. She had developed a habit of rushing off the float so we taught her not to expect that to be ok.
Then I took her to a small yard and began to teach her ground manners. I taught her to stand still when I wanted to pick up her feet and I also taught her that I was the leader and the top horse, not her. It took AGES but in the end she followed me.

The way I taught both of these things was to make her trot around me until she stopped and turned or walked towards me, I would step back out of her personal space to reward her. Then I would move closer to her and allow her to stand still while I touched her all over. If she stepped away I would make her run more. In the end I was able to pick up her front feet while she stood there and was working on the back when I was time to go home. This is a useful skill to teach them because there are few things more annoying that having a horse shuffle around while you are trying to pick up their feet.

Today I will work on that more, as well as tacking her up and lunging her.

Her name is Xena and she is a bay (brown body, black legs, mane and tail)