Naughty Starry

Naughty Starry


I went on an evening ride on Cole with my boyfriend and his horse Starry D. Starry is normally a quiet horse, and he’s a good match for Cole Train’s exuberance. Cole wakes Starry up and Starry calms Cole down.


Once we crossed the river, we decided to give trotting a try. I don’t know what got into Starry, but he was dancing, throwing his head around and trying to canter. We stopped and restarted—well tried to. Starry was in the lead, and he didn’t want to go forward. That’s not a surprise. He is a follower, not a leader. I just wanted him in the lead to keep the speed down.


Sigh. Since my last solo ride with Cole was positive, I decided he should lead and I would deal with the speed. I didn’t get speed—rather I got a nice moderate trot. after about 20 seconds, I heard my boyfriend say that Starry was out of control. How could this be? I was in the lead and if Starry was out of control, I would think he would be passing us. Confused as I was, I stopped Cole and waited. Turns out Starry was bucking and dancing and throwing his head around.


My boyfriend told me to go on ahead, and he would meet me on the way home. So I did, thinking Starry might be better alone, and just having a companion made him excited.


So, I trotted on. Cole continued the moderate trot until I got to the section where we cantered most of the summer. His trot picked up faster and then even faster. I thought I would test the brakes—and there weren’t any. I used the bend to the left, bend to the right, bend to the left… technique, which usually works, and it did. It was time to do transitions. We did walk, whoa, click, treat a few times. we then moved to walk, trot, whoa, click, treat. We did that about 10 times—each time I got a better stop. By the end, he was trotting just the way I like and stopping on a dime to a vocal command. I reinstalled the brakes.



We turned around (turn on the haunches, of course) and headed back. We met Starry. My boyfriend said he kept him at a walk until I was out of sight and started trotting. At first, Starry was rambunctious, but then he calmed down and he was fine. he hadn’t been ridden the previous 2 days, the weather was cold and it was only the second time this year that he wasn’t on the trail alone. All this added up to a hyper horse.


We walked quietly back to the barn, and Starry was perfect. Cole did get wound up when a deer started trotting toward him.


Back home, my boyfriend immediately checked his tack to make sure it was adjusted correctly. He then lounged Starry for 10 minutes and couldn’t believe the energy he had. That confirmed the problem was that Starry was feeling good.


I was very proud of Cole for handling everything so well.