about with stuff at his front end, but the belly and the legs? No
chance.
Loosening the straps as much as possible, then, wary of hooves-
to-the-head, I used a riding crop to hook the belly-straps and
pull them toward me, being extremely careful not to touch
Felix in any way lest he took it into his head to remove the
source of his annoyance with a swift kick. He didn't. He was
actually surprisingly good about his belly, and I got the middle
straps on with little more than a twitch when something tickled
unexpectedly. Trying to get the straps around his back legs
nearly earned me a foot to the face though.
I was able to get his least ticklish leg by stroking the inside
of his leg with the crop (over which I had hooked the strap)
and carefully drawing it through so that I could grab the end
and hook it on. The same method failed to produce the desired
effect on his left hind-leg, which sailed up somewhere in the
vicinity of my kneecap upon application of the crop. My first
instinct was of course to slap him on the bum with it and tell
About The Author - Katie Haggath
Katie Haggath (20) loves writing and horses. She lives in NZ on 10 acres with her parents and a petting zoo's worth of animals. When
Katie's article dropped into the email in-box in the office it was one of those `can't stop reading this' moments. Here was a young rider
and writer who publically admitted that she knew very little about handling a young horse, yet has the desire to learn and can see the
humorous side of this learning experience. All horsemen and women have had to go through the learning process at some stage in their
lives...but not everyone has the writing ability, humour and guts to share this journey with readers of a national equestrian magazine.
Katie has recently taken on a young horse, with the aim being to train him (from scratch) and to break him in herself next year so, be
prepared to share all the errors and the successes as we follow Katie and Felix over the next twelve months in their journey of learning
horsemanship.
INTRODUCING Illustrator Kay Thornton, a very talented artist who was one of the many who responded to our Facebook enquiries for
him off. It's probably not the natural-horsemanship way, but
given that we were well into the third hour by now, I hope I can
be forgiven for losing some of my sweetness-and-treats attitude
to training.
He kicked out at me at least three more times before the message
hit home, and then only because I missed. I didn't hit him on
the bum. The crop missed and slapped him on his little man-
bits instead. You have never heard a horse squeal until you have
heard that. Oops.
Feeling extremely guilty, I returned to the nicey-niceness, but
I don't know if it was the niceness or the slap to the plums that
made Felix stand perfectly still for the first time and have his
strap fastened. Not in the mood to push my luck, I let him go and,
relieved, we both beat a hasty retreat: he, to the shelter of the tree
and me inside for hot chocolate and a change of clothes.
Voila! His cover was on. And to think, it only took three hours,
two cloud-bursts and one terribly bad aim to produce a result.