Does Anyone Have an Extension Ladder?

Saint Lawrence - June 17, 2012
How do I get on this big baby?

Our baby Saint Lawrence turned two on Derby Day – May 5th, 2012. He is 16.3 hands tall!

Saint Lawrence has been the butt of NickerDoodles cartoons and he has earned all the tall tales about him.

We have been doing lots of ground training with Saint Lawrence since he arrived at Bits & Bytes Farm just shy of his first birthday last year. He has had an exercise saddle girthed up on him and he has been bridled. We have long-lined and lunged him and we have even put him through our Redneck Roundpen despooking obstacles. We have not yet ridden him.

Saint Lawrence is growing so fast that we did not want to stress his joints by pushing him too hard, too soon. If his career path was to race, he would be getting ready now for the July two year-old sales and being breezed an eighth of a mile in under 11 seconds! He is lucky that he will be given the time to mature. We just have one problem with that plan . . .

Normally, with a young horse getting ready to be ridden, I would press down on his back and build up to laying across his back like a dead man. This gives the young horse a chance to adjust to weight on his back. Later I would just boost myself up and sit on him and it would be no big deal to be ridden the first time.

With Saint Lawrence we have a problem . . . he is already too tall for me to be able to reach over and push down on his back or to boost up to lay over his back. Heck, I can’t even see the top of his back from the ground! Our three step “Ole Lady” mounting block is not even high enough to easily lay over his back.

How do we solve this problem?

Who said if you can’t bring Mohammad to the mountain bring the mountain to Mohammad? A plan has emerged to solve this problem!

Saint Lawrence learns to stretch down.
The mountain comes down!

Stay tuned for future updates. See more photos on Saint Lawrence’s page.

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