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| Popeye in his previous home |
When Pops first arrived, a perfectly muddy dapple gray horse, his mane and tail had not been touched for 8 years. After he let it grow wild, he had rolled in the mud, he had picked up burrs, no one had ever brushed it out. You can only imagine how much it irked me not to be able to get my hands on it!
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| Pops the day after his arrival |
Halter breaking Popeye was obviously my first priority, my incentive was to get the knots out of his mane as fast as possible! There was absolutely no way to get close enough to Pops to get on a halter, he would simply attack me and drive me away. I spent two weeks sitting outside his pen reading to him while he ate in order for him to get used to me. I would read him heartfelt stories of horses written by Kim Meeder, thinking her inspirational stories would calm him. Unfortunately, Pops, like so many horses, doesn’t speak English and after two weeks he still had serious concerns about letting me near him.
So I went with a more aggressive tactic, I stood in his pen and tossed my lariat in his general direction. At first, when he saw the rope coming at him, he would bolt and run as fast as he could to get away from it. This went on for a good half hour or so until he finally calmed enough to let it touch him. After a while, he was standing quietly and let the rope drop on his back, on his hind end. It would fall and I was pretty pleased that he was finally being touched by something unfamiliar to him. With such good progress, I would like to say that it ended there with no issues, but that just wouldn’t be true. As I tossed the rope in his direction one last time, I realized my mistake. The rope sailed through air as I thought to myself, maybe I shouldn’t have left the loop at the end of the lariat, which naturally dropped over his head and settled around his neck.
Oh Sh*t! All of sudden I now had a wild horse at the end of a rope which was snugly around his throat. Now please believe me, I am not a roper and if I had thought I would ever catch him, I never would have thrown the rope in the first place. In fact, in all the years I have had a lariat, I don’t think I have ever caught anything with it. I’ve just always thought they were handy to have around, you know, for dragging logs or something. Now that I had Pops in a potential deadly situation, our hour long gentle touching session had become something very different.
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| Yep, that's the lariat around his neck |
I tried flipping the rope back up over his head, but since this was a new thing for Pops, he panicked and bolted. Thus tightening the rope around his neck. Fearful he would either choke or break his neck, I had to quickly come up with a way to get him close enough to me to get the rope off. I was lucky enough to have a wall to stand behind, with two posts 12 feet apart that were cemented into the ground. I took one end of the rope, went around the first post, down the side of the wall, around the second post and then pulled. Pops didn’t move and the rope got tighter. Just before he blew up again, I grabbed a handful of rocks and threw them at his hind end, he shot forward closer to the first post, the rope loosened and I got a bit further away from him. We rested, then repeated this process probably about five times until Pops figured out that to release the pressure and get away from me, he just had to follow the rope. The whole process took nearly 4 hours, but in the end, I had his head touching the first post next to wall, I had the other end of the rope tied to the second post 12feet away. After he settled a bit, I stayed on the other side of the wall while he kicked and struck at me, reached over, got the halter on with a 22 foot line and cut through the lariat as fast as I could. It fell off his neck when he broke free, the halter stayed on and he was properly caught. I never replaced that lariat, I doubt I ever will!
So what does this have to do with Popeye’s tail? Like I said, tangled hair drives me batty!
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| His tail had tangles just like his mane |
At this point, Popeye’s tail was a black dread-lock, though I suspected that it was supposed to be white. I had to get close enough to him to be able to brush it out, but he was still hell bent on demolishing me. The two posts, 12 feet apart, worked out well so I would take the very end on the 22 foot line, run it behind one post, pull him up to it as I walked away, and tie him off to the second post. He was allowing me to be within 20 feet of him, so I found myself a 20 small plastic PVC pipe, and proceeded to attempt to touch him with it. Popeye would bite, strike and kick at the pipe, breaking the end of it off, thus getting me a bit closer to him every time. Eventually I was able to stroke him with my training stick, and when he stopped trying to destroy that, I got my hands on him. I then got my hands on his mane, and then on his tail. I think it took me three days.
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| This is the only pic I could find that shows how I did not tie him to the post by his head, but to the post 12 ft to his left |
My OCD tail obsession doesn’t mean much to most people, but I thought about it today. I brought Pops in out of the pasture, and the little turd had a blackberry branch stuck in his tail. Not a big one that is easily removed, one of those small long ones that wraps it’s way in and out through the whole thing, tangled throughout the braid. I very loudly chastised him as I brought him in to fix it. I mean really, 10 acres if open space and he had to find the one blackberry bush with the most thorns?! I tied him up and began working on his tail. I yanked, I pulled, I detangled, I complained. All the while, Pops stood perfectly still, and probably fell asleep. As I got his tail put back together, I thought back to day one, where my current behavior would have gotten my head taken off. Pops has come such a long way and is a constant reminder to me that every horse, no matter how many mistakes you make along the way, will learn to trust his rider. It just takes time, and sometimes a bit of creativity. By the way, isn’t his tail gorgeous?!
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