We did some nice circles and change of direction of circle at canter for the first time. I was very impressed to note that she got all her lead changes right as she came past me to circle the other way, they looked really neat. For a race horse she can do some pretty fancy dressage moves !
Quick trip to the indoor sand school for a nice roll and some liberty and then to bed. She is getting almost too confident with her rolling now and nearly landed on me today. At least she doesn't see me as a predator in any shape or form !!
Long session with Billy in the indoor school. Had a little trouble placing the feet, especially the front ones, but won in the end. We then did a lot of work next to the mounting block getting him confident standing next to it with me on top. A vulnerable position for a prey animal to have a predator looming over him, but we managed lots of relaxed standing. I did lean over him once but he moved of and the mounting block fell over with me on top of it again. Another nice graze on the shin. I have fallen off more mounting blocks than horses now and it is getting a bit annoying !! Ritchie laughing didn't help. Thank God she has lost her voice at the moment or the ribbing would have been endless. Even after all that commotion Billy was happy to stand next to me and have some nice scratches. Just so that he wouldn't start to make assumptions about me standing on the block I made him do some circles and YoYo games from the block. All very nice and calm.
Ritchie then left to nurse her voice back to health and we moved onto doing more circling game from the ground. As before I wanted to work on walk trot transitions but needed a way to get it to make more sense to him. I used a cone. The idea was that a transition would only occur at a cone. This could be walk to trot, trot to walk, walk to halt etc. He quickly picked up on the game and an ear pricked towards me as he approached the cone checking for instructions. Sometimes there would be no command and I expected him to maintain gait.
I placed the cone on a part of the circle that he originally found a bit spooky and where he would tend to pull back. It was amazing how quickly this cured the spookiness, partly I suspect as this was where he could stop for a rest and so became a place of comfort. The transitions also became much more confident and fluid. Another few sessions of this should really help.
We then moved to YoYo over a pole, partially to give YoYo a purpose and partly to get him to learn where his feet are. Given that he is supposed to be a jump race horse he has no idea as to where his feet are in relation to an obstacle. He managed to hit the pole with all four hooves coming forward on one occasion ! Backing over the pole was almost comical to start with, but with patience he got better and what is more seemed to really enjoy the challenge judging by the look on his face.
No comments:
Post a Comment