Friday, December 10, 2010

Beautiful day

Indoors that is. I am so thankful for an indoor arena. It is like a fridge in their but it is level, dry and works, not windy. It has its drawbacks mind you, but it has many more positives. Anyway, Buddy came through great. I groomed and saddled him, by the way, he was waiting at the gate of his stall for me, uhmmmm! We did some slow warmup into our session. I am learning it is better to move slowly and fluidly into something with him rather than trying to make a big fast splash into things. he is alot calmer this way. He responded real easy with me and was giving me no arguments at all. So we went right into saddle work. My main goal today was to get him to really follow his head. When I pick up a rein he gives me softness and goes in that direction. I had to help him out with my leg some but he took to my feel right off. The arena floor has some kiddie pool size wet spots on it from leads in the roof so I used them as things to go around since I don't trees and bushes in there. This makes for doing figure eights and work on getting him real flexible laterally not just in his head and neck but also in his barrel/ribs and it helps to get his hip tracking to the outside. I just kept this up on these wet spots at a walk then when he was doing that real good we went into a trot doing the same thing. He was coming off my leg real nice. I even got some leg yields that I wasn't asking for per se.
Towards the end of the session I asked for and got a real nice loping canter that was feeling real good to me. I was doing the same thing with him. He is responding to my softness real nice and he is becoming fun to ride. It should be this way with kids too shouldn't it. You want to get  kid to be calm and responsive? get them busy on some good old fashioned work, put away the tv, the computer, nintendo etc. and get them busy doing something outside. Then when they are settled down that is the time to teach em something. Or that is the time to bring em in and let em chill out a while. Horses and kids, I think they are the same thing sometimes. Dogs, now that is another story.
Chris, my student took Buddy in hand and did real well with him today too. She is catching on to handling him from the ground. She rode the last half of the lesson and was using the wet spots in the same way I did. Only thing is she needs to learn her rein management better. But who doesn't. She is doing pretty good for as many rides as she has on him. My desensitizing of Buddy with the whip and flag has paid off today too. Something made a noise, like snow sliding off a roof, while Chris was riding, it made Buddy spook and jumb a bit, but he did it basically in place and she stayed on. Then a little later, just as she was coming back to the end of the arena he went by something that made him jump sideways and stop but she stuck like glue to him and it was nothing. So Buddy had a good session in both ways today.
Well, stay soft, gentle and relaxed and see if you don't have a better outcome today.
til another day.

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