Domino 2

Hello all,

I had a good session with Domino today. We worked an hour, after I worked catching him and haltering him. For a horse that has supposedly been ridden and taught to dance (somewhat to music), whatever that means, this is a horse that is not soft. He was real stiff on the right side. I worked a bunch on lateral flexion and got him pretty soft on both sides. I had to lunge him and switch directions for about 10 min. though because he didn't want to stand while I flexed him. A horse will move when you first teach lateral flexion because he is trying to figure out what I want, but on the right side he moved all over. So after I lunged him he settled down. Part of his movement might have been I wasn't real clear what I was asking of him. On the left side he did real good. I also worked on desensitizing him to the lead rope and the stick. We worked on downward pressure and back up. I also got him disengaging real good. He needs to get a lot better before I get on him but it is progressing. I got his shoulders to move over, yet I need to work on getting him to plant his hind foot and just move his shoulder so we will keep working on that. As a last exercise I cleaned out his feet. He did ok at that too. Before I knew it my hour was up. I am going to restrict myself to only an hour in order to see how far I can get this horse in just 30 hours of training. So far he is making progress. My goal is to be riding him by Monday of next week.
As a side note, just two praises. I went up to Cannonsburg for a horsemanship class on Saturday. Raven did excellent and I learned much.
Praise #1 - A couple weekends ago I went to a Dennis Reis clinic. My instructor has all but one of his endorsements. I would have liked to have bought his tape series, but Jaime has taught me much of that so I decided not to. Well Christine, the lady who owns the riding stable in Cannonsburg had his entire course and loaned them to me for as long as I need them. She thinks I will come back and say thanks for saving me a thousand bucks, because she and Jaime think I know most of what is on the tapes. We will see.
Praise #2- If any of you know what it is like to jacknife a trailer going to down the freeway you know my relief. I was on my way back from Cannonsburg pulling at 12' stock trailer with Raven in it. We were on I-196 coming out of GR going west up the hill and around the curves after you cross the river at 131, when I think Raven shifted her weight. That pushed the back end of my truck to my right, I took my foot off the gas ( I was only going about 40-45mph, because the road was wet) and steered into the left lane hoping the car I saw in my rear view a second before this was not beside me. I had to go into that lane or would have completely lost it. Anyway, after that split second scare I checked my rear view and saw a line of cars in both lanes waiting for what I will do next. I then checked my pants, everything was ok there. Whew! I pulled over into the right lane and continued on, slow and easy the rest of the way home. I'm sure the other cars were glad to get my me. I am also sure that my angel was watching out for me. I am just glad to be able to celebrate Sharon's birthday with her today.
God is in control!