Ice

Last week was frozen.  And I wanted to lunge my horse but the arena was being used.  So I went to the round pen.  There are puddles in the round pen that were ice, hard ice.  Zoe and I went in and I just let her wander around to check it out.  She sniffed at the ice but stayed off of it.  And she noticed that if she stayed on the fence line she could stay off of the ice.  So she started trotting…after all we are in there to work.  So I said fine, trot.  I asked for changes of direction by turning into the rail and sometimes away from the rail.  She was doing good, listening and staying off the ice.  So I was surprised at one of the turns she headed straight for the ice.  My heart stopped.  I saw her trot on to it, realize it was slippery, tried to stop, saw her hind end get very squirrely, and she managed to stop on the ice.  I was worried that she would pull her suspensory ligament again.  She sniffed the ice and walked off of it and trotted on.  She was moving fine so I let her continue…she was the one who wanted to trot at this moment.  So I put her back to work.  Again at another turn she went towards the ice.  This time I stopped all movement with my body and before I could get a sound out of my mouth, her front feet were on the ice but she managed to stop herself with her hind end-that was not on the ice yet.  I thought it was very interesting.  She is a lazy horse and will usually stop on her front end.  But doing that this time wouldn't have worked-it would have caused her to continue sliding forward and all her feet would have been on the ice.  So she used her hind end to stop and I've never seen her do it so well.  It made me laugh.  The next day she was fine-no problems with any pulled suspensory ligaments.    And she learned a valuable lesson-stay off the ice.