Saturday, August 13, 2011

Day 3 of Jacob's refresher

Had a good time with him today. I have just been going through all the exercises of the foundations course. He is doing well. I have seen some things I need tweaked in me: eg. the way I ask for turns in round pen, circling better with him and leading better. I use the counting 1-2-3-4 and then increasing pressure, just to name a few of the things I am doing a little different. I also did something he calls 'cruising' with Jacob which gets him to rate his own gait, no nagging by me. Oh, I also am getting better at letting him make the mistake and then correcting him rather than nagging him. He is responsible to keep trotting until I tell him to slow or speed up. So I let him drop to a walk before I correct him. Today we went 3 miles after all the ground exercises almost all at the trot. I will tell you he settled right down and stayed primarily in the middle of the road. That is also combining the 'fence' exercise. He is responsible to go in a straight line and not wander all over. But again, I let him make the mistake and then correct him back to the middle. Clinton uses a fence, but since I don't have one long enough I used the center of the road. I guarantee by the time we got back, he was relaxed. Oh, by the way, that cruising is done on a loose rein (at the buckle/center of the rein). I just free handed him, no hands unless he needed correcting. I wouldn't do that with every horse though. It was a good workout for both of us.
Lisa, there is a leading exercise I will show you next time that I want you to do with Ceasar, after saddling, but before you do the sending or lunge for respect exercises with him. This might help prevent his humpiness.

1 comment:

LisaMarie said...

We are starting our 3 day lessons tomorrow, we will be ready on Wed to show what we know.

I went to Willow Tree today for 2 hrs to watch the clinic.

Nice to watch but better to ride! Nothing beats the one to one training, plus it's a bonus that you trained my horse.
Thanks again.