Our first major fight........!

So, me and a friend Catherine decided that once a week we would take our young horses down to a roundpen in Silverdale to work them. Both of us cant ride in the paddocks anymore and we thought that this would be a good idea to get the two young ones out and about over winter.

I was feeling so confident, that we were going to have heaps of fun and was really looking forward to it. Got Diesel out, brushed him and started to load him onto the float.

He walked pretty much straight on (I had put a small feed in there for him while I was doing up the bumbars). I hooked the rope over a bar while I went to do up the bumbars, had pulled it around behind Diesel and just as I was about to latch it in he started moving around.

Unfortunately his rope got wedged and he started absolutely freaking out, pulled it so tight it was totally jammed and then he went ballistic! Freaking out totally, kicking and pulling until finally he broke the rope and flew off the float. I by now had absolutely crapped myself!!!!! There was no way I was going in there while he was going off his nut so I just stayed out of the way and tried to calm him but it obviously didnt work!

Caught him on the drivew (he hadnt gone very far atall), checked him over so make sure he wasn't hurt, gave him (and me) a couple of minutes to calm down and then tried to get him on again.

He was not having a bar of it. Would put both front feet on the ramp and then plant himself. Would not budge a muscle, just look at me as if to say 'make me'. Obviously I cant pull him onto the float so in the end I had a whip and if he went off the ramp I would make it very umpleasant to be there, but as soon as he was back on it would be 'nice' for him.

After about 15 minutes he finally went all the way in but he was most unhappy about being on there. I them unloaded him again, one step at a time and straight away tried to load him again and same thing, planted his feet and wouldnt not budge so we did the same exercise again until he was on. Sounds really easy but it was bloody hard work, I was not feeling the most confident but knew it had to be done.

So today he had quite a few whacks with the whip, alot of swearing from me and generally a really awful time. I feel terrible that due to me looping the rope (and it subsequestly getting snagged) we had this fiasco.

So we didnt go out anywhere, I eventually reloaded him 3 times before calling it quits on the whole situation. I was not able to do the bumbar up atall but at least I got him on!!!!! Gutted that such a small but exciting exercise for us turned into such a shit fight!