Let The Training Begin

I've waited since...November, I think. Yeah. Maybe November. And finally the training has begun!

We moved to PA and a month and a half later we finally hauled Taunie down. The haul was very uneventful and so was the arrival. I got a few crappy pictures which I won't display because...well, they are crap. My camera kept dieing because my batteries were lame. I've had that camera for about 3 years and its from Walmart so its about to get a boot stomping one day soon as it is.

So anyways, she arrived on Tuesday and we tossed her out into the field. She wandered over to the one single horse who has been dubbed "The Weakest Link" by the rest of the herd and made friends.

I let her settle for a day and today I went up there to work her. Trent won't let me bring her in from the field or take her back out into it. He doesn't want me to be jumped on or something I guess, so thats all his job. We're finding out just how much she HATES mud. Did a Hail Mary leap across some mud at Trent who just about had her ass for it. She's either going to make me a really crappy trail horse or we're gonna rock over liverpools.

We get into the arena and we start our first tieing lesson. She's 4 and doesn't know how to tie. I think it went decently well. No explosions. Not a lot of confusion. By the end she seemed to realise what was going on with it and to me, thats a step up. So we groomed all that shedding hair off of her...or as much as I could handle, and I took her for a walk. We worked on heeding. Something she vaguely remembered from a day or two over winter. Heeding is basically leading the horse without any contact on the leadline. The horse will move based on your body pressures. Turn, stop, go, back. You don't need to put any pressure on the line to achieve any of this. The result is a much lighter, much more responsive horse when being led (which will transfer over to lunging) and an easier horse to lead and control when a situation gets out of hand.

We did about 15 minutes of heeding before I started pushing her out onto the lunge line. I was a little hesitant to start lunging her because I know of some "explosive lungers" who think the only thing the person wants them to do is bolt around them in circles when lunging. I'm about 100 times weaker than I was last summer so I don't think I could handle one of those right now. Not very gracefully anyways. Luckily someone had lunged her correctly before I bought her because she didn't bolt off in circles. I asked her to trot by raising the lunge whip slightly and picking up my own feet a few times and she trot. Halting was a little harder since theres a lot more static between horse hand handler with 10 feet between them instead of when the handler is right beside the horse, but she did a few good halt transitions when I asked.

We turned directions and she did even better on her "stupid" side. Some horses do better on that side and some horses don't. I don't think she's a horse to be able to think of 2 or 3 things at once though, so when we turned she was glued on to me. She didn't do anything by herself unless I asked for it, where as in the other direction, her mind would wander. She was much more at ease going her "good" way, which was left. But going right is a bit more of a challenge for her.

Happy that I achieved at least a little bit today, I decided to end the session. Its a brand new place. She's only ever been inside the arena once before when she arrived so I didn't expect her to be entirely focussed. She gave me what I wanted though and for that I can't complain.

Trent picked out her feet because "I shouldn't be bending over like that" (pssst, I'm 9 months pregnant now) and she did relatively well with it. She challenged him once but it was no big deal. I brushed more of that disgusting winter coat off of her as well before I handed her off to Trent to take back into the field. She nearly plowed him over on their way there because of a muddy spot and really didn't seem to care that he was trying to punch her in the gut to get her off of him. Hahaha...but anyways, yeah. Heeding will fix that. She'll be more aware of personal space by this time next week and won't barge in so often to be carried over water.

But until then, it looks like Trent will be carrying her over parts she doesn't like unless I give him a whip and tell him to "have at it" if she gets in his space. I might just do that, to be honest. I just need to get one! Sometimes you just have to raise the excitement level once and the problem is forever gone.

I'm going back up there tomorrow. I had it planned that I'd go up there every other day, but Trent says he'll be out that way on "business" (yeah, whatever!) and said he could drop me off if I wanted.

Sure. Why not?