rest once he finally took it.
“Come on, Blue,” I said quietly. “Don’t argue about it. Just take it.”
Nope. Forget it. He wasn’t having it.
Time for Plan B.
Blue was hardly the first horse I’d worked with who wouldn’t take a bit, and there were some before him who were so stubborn I’d probably still be standing there to this day trying to get them to open their mouths if I hadn’t had a few tricks up my sleeve. I went into the tack room and pulled a small, lidded coffee can out of the cabinet. The outside of the can was dark and sticky, and as soon as I took off the lid, the rich, sweet scent filled my nostrils.
Out in the aisle, Blue sniffed. I grinned. Oh yes, this would work.
The bit was a snaffle, which meant it was jointed in the middle, and thus could bend in half with ease. This way, it fit without any trouble into the coffee can. I dipped it, then pulled it out and took it back out to Blue, keeping my hand under it so it didn’t drip all over the tack room.
I offered him the molasses-covered bit, letting him sniff it first. His ears perked up, and he reached for the bit with his upper lip. By the time he had half a clue what the molasses was on, the bit was in his mouth and across his tongue where it belonged.
Chomping away, he glared at me, and I chuckled to myself.
“I know, I know,” I said, patting his shoulder. “I tricked you.”
He snorted, then chewed on the bit while I cleaned off my hand. Hopefully, he wasn’t the type who’d only fall for this trick once. Some would buy it every single time until the day they died. Others would buy it once and then clamp their jaws shut at the first whiff of molasses from then on.
But this time, it had worked, so I’d take that and run with it.
Blue kept chomping while I fastened all the straps on his bridle. Then he watched uncertainly while I picked up the coiled lines off the tack box. I laced them through the rings on top of the surcingle, one on the left and one on the right, and then clipped them to the rings on his bit. He wasn’t sure about all of this but didn’t seem too alarmed, which was a good sign.
Once he was ready, I took him to the outside arena. There, I held the lines like an extra-long set of driving reins, though I walked rather than riding in a cart. Instead of walking behind Blue, I stayed off to the side, making a smaller circle while he walked the outermost track beside the rail.
Blue nervously chomped the bit and danced a little. He shied away from the traffic cones stacked in the corner. From the mounting block in the other corner. From a butterfly. The cones. The mounting block. The place where the butterfly had been a moment ago. I just kept him walking, letting him get accustomed to his surroundings. As he calmed down, I steered him into a half figure eight, walking him across the diagonal of the arena until he reached the opposite corner and continued counterclockwise instead of clockwise. Naturally, he spooked at the butterfly’s landing place, the mounting block and the cones.
As every horse eventually did, he got bored with spooking at the same things over and over again and started looking for new things to be scared of. Once he did that— A leaf? Really, Blue? —I casually switched from walking him in circles to steering him in smaller circles. Serpentines. Figure eights. Halt. Walk. Halt again.
I tried to back him up, but that erupted into disaster in no time flat. At first, I thought he was going to do it: he’d tucked his head and leaned back like he was supposed to. One step backward, and he jerked his head up so hard he nearly pulled the lines from my hands before he reared all the way up.
As soon as his front feet were on the ground again, I put him into a walk, and we were back to spooking—cones, mounting block, leaf—and he snorted and blew as he chomped the bit and danced sideways. Okay, so walking and turning were fine, but backing was a problem. Good to know.
More circles. More
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