My Little Pony, Part 5: Retraining the "Cinchy" Horse
When I first put my saddle on Twister to see how it fit, I discovered a couple of things: 1) Twister takes a REALLY small girth (18", and the smallest I had was 26"), and 2) Twister is what we call "cinchy", meaning that for some reason, she doesn't like it when you tighten up the girth. As soon as I reached for the girth, she started moving around, pinned her ears, tried to nip me and started pawing the ground. Horses generally become cinchy due to poorly fitting tack, people over-tightening the girth or doing it up too quickly, or because there is some physical issue like a sore back or rib causing them discomfort. In some way or another, they have been frightened or made uncomfortable by the process and have come to resent and/or fear it. I do not believe that horses become cinchy simply out of bad temper. In Twister's case, I had noted some oily dandruff in the girth area when she first arrived, so I suspected that she may have had some kind of irritat...