Delaney was in training at Steph's when I arrived to be a working student. He was an adorable 14.2 hand Connemara pony with some of the worst ground manners I'd ever seen, but for as obnoxious as he was on the ground, I very quickly grew to love him under saddle. Delaney and I taught each other. I taught him about cross-country fences, big gymnastic grids, and not being a crazy, spooky jerk on the flat. He taught me that a grown person on a pony had better never anticipate the fences, because there isn't really any neck to jump up, and you're probably going to throw that pony's balance off. He also taught me that ponies are incredibly fun, and that even when that jump at the end of the grid is over said pony's head, the two of you will be just fine if you just keep coming.
Delaney was one of those horses who is brave as can be over fences, but thinks everything he walks/trots/canters by is going to eat him. And it's going to eat him every time he goes by it. I probably don't have to tell you that sometimes this made me want to kill him. I distinctly remember one lesson where Steph had me cantering for a solid 10-15 minutes straight because we weren't allowed to stop until Delaney stopped shying at the barrels when we cantered past. Eventually he did stop, but I think he was just tired. What all of that excessive spooking taught me, however, was how to "ride the spook". I tend to do this with Dee, too, who is a bit of a boredom spooker. To "ride the spook", I would simply engage Delaney in some other activity. These were usually lateral in nature. For instance, when he was engaged in a shoulder-in while passing the barrels, he couldn't simply drop to the inside and shy away from them. Instead, he had to focus, focus, focus. These made our rides pretty interesting, because we were hardly ever just "trotting around".
Above, I mentioned Delaney's atrocious ground manners, but saying they were bad doesn't do it justice. I was one of the only people in the barn who liked him, because I knew how cool he was to ride. The girls who just handled him on the ground? Well... his nickname was "Looney". This was because occasionally at least once a week, when you least expected it, he would just... leave. And when he decided to do this, no force on earth could stop him (except once, when he tried to leave a stall and one of the girls somehow managed to react quickly enough to slam all of her weight against him while he was leaving and essentially pin him in the stall door). One day, I was getting him ready to show to a potential buyer. As I was grooming him (in his stall), he suddenly decided it was time to leave. He bowled straight past me, out of the stall, around the corner, down the aisle, and into the paddock attached to the barn. I was not happy. I caught him, yelled at him, and had no sooner gotten him into his stall when he wheeled around and left again, ripping the lead rope out of my hand and hitting the cement aisle in such a frenzy that as he tried to two-wheel it around the corner to gallop down the aisle, he slipped and fell over, got back up and went careening out into the paddock. He was fine, and after that he stood nicely to be tacked up. The bad part? The potential buyers walked in just as he took his second little romp. Needless to say, Delaney also taught me hyper-vigilence.
I would like to throw in (to show you how awesome this pony was to ride) that the clients who watched him being such a fool on the ground were the ones who bought him. They're still together. Actually, I saw him at Riga Meadow a few years back, which you can read about here.
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