Horses with inferiority complexes

I liked Chocolate from the very beginning. She was attentive and had vivid eyes. She was not like those horses that are used for schooling, who seemed sullen and didn’t care about who is riding them. Chocolate always seemed curious about her rider and she always had her ears turned up in a friendly way. 

I liked Chocolate from the very beginning, but I seemed to be the only one. When I was riding her for the first time, the horse riding instructor told me: “Be careful that she doesn’t throw you off. If she kicks and rears, don’t use the riding crop or she will  throw you off.” I was surprised to hear that because it didn’t seem to fit to Chocolate’s personality.

The first lesson with her was fine. She was sensitive to the reins, she had a lovely trot and even though we didn’t do much galloping, she was responsive to my leg aids then. There was nothing that gave me the impression that she was one of those evil-minded horses, who would do anything to throw off their riders. 

Two weeks later, we switched horses and the girl who was riding Chocolate at that time was having a hard time. The horse seemed completely changed, as if it was going crazy. When we came to galloping, she stood in the middle of the paddock kicking the other horses and rearing on her hinder legs. She girl seemed very desperate on top of the horse.

The week after that it was my turn with Chocolate again and she was doing the same things. She was  great during the lesson, but as soon as one horse in the paddock started to gallop, she went crazy. But I managed not to fall off. I took it as a challenge to make her gallop correctly and since I was the only one who would take up the challenge, I could ride her every lesson. 

For the next few weeks, I found out a couple of things: Chocolate only did the mounting when galloping on the left hand, on the right hand, she was fine. When using too much leg aid, she felt confused and wouldn’t comply. Therefore, the leg aid when starting to gallop had to be very light. If she was about to rear, I had to use the crop lightly and then she would start running like crazy. After half a lap she would slow down and react to my aids again. Thus, I always needed a lot of empty space ahead of me. If there were other horses, she would try to bite them.

Soon, I found out why Chocolate was rearing. Bully, one of those evil-minded horses, who deserved his name because of his size and shape, started kicking. Chocolate and I happened to be behind that horse and the hooves were flying in our direction. We were lucky not be hit. For the rest of the lesson, Chocolate was panicking. Whenever Bully passed us by, she jumped aside and mounted. She was clearly afraid of him.

Chocolate was one of the smallest horses in the stable and as I had just found out, she was afraid of taller horses, especially when they galloped by her. Therefore, she reared to make herself seem taller and intimidate them. A solution to her behaviour was found easily: stay ahead of the taller horses and start galloping before they do.

As soon as I stuck to those things, Chocolate was the best horse in the stable. There was only one problem. As soon as the other riders saw, how well she doing when I rode her, they wanted to ride her as well.