Friday, December 14, 2012

observations from the horse

I haven't been able to work with my horses lately, but I thought I would record some observations I have made in the past week. Probably, things that you may already know, but they still are interesting. 1. Horses live in the moment. They don't hold grudges. If another horse is in their space they either move away themselves or make the other horse move. They don't nag them or keep after them. Once the other moves away they leave it alone. Each time becomes a new time for them. If they were just standing there relaxing, they immediately go back to standing and relaxing. They are not thinking about what happened 10 minutes ago or yesterday or last week. They are not thinking, 'man, I can't believe that idiot did that.' Nor are they thinking about what is going to happen later today, tomorrow or next week. They are not fretting about the future. They are only interested in what is happening right now and in the next moment they react to whatever stimulation is going on due to their survival instinct. When they are fretting about something it has to do with what is going on in the moment. Maybe you walked in to their space with a halter or you have a noisey bag in hand that is scarring them. That is why they fret. But as soon as you take that away, they go back to relaxing. I think that is a good healthy way to live for us to. We cannot do anything about what happened in the past. We can only get it right with others and with the Lord if we have been wrong. Holding grudges will only cheat ourselves out of living to the fullest now. In addition, we don't know what is going to happen in the next 5 minutes. We are not in control of that. We don't know what a day holds. We can only plan our day and live it out letting the day unfold as it will. Jesus said things like "forgive and it shall be forgiven you" and "take no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take thought for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Matthew 6:14,34 So take a lesson from the horse today: don't hold grudges and live in the moment making the most of the moment you have.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Yesterday had a good time with Moonie and So Grand. I am almost done with my work with them so I wanted to go through everything they know to this point. I have worked through all the fundamentals level of ground work with them. That is 13 exercises that they know. So I got So Grand out first. He met me at the door like usual. He likes to come out and play. I left their web halter on because that is what they are wearing. Because I used the rope halter to teach, the web halter was just fine with both of them. I took him through the round pen (the only thing he won't do to my satisfaction is follow me off lead around the pen)Then to desensitizing to lead and stick and string. He Yields hindquarters and forequarters real good. His backup is pretty good, although he will think I want him to go around me if I back him too fast. His lunge for respect is at the stage 2 level where I only have to look at his butt and he disengages and faces me and backus up. His flexing is real soft. He sends nice and smooth and even does an Intermediate level move of c-pattern nicely. His circle driving is pretty good. He leads fine, in fact I took him out of the round pen and around the indoor arena with no problems. He is not bad on fundamental desensitizing while moving forward. I also picked up his feet and cleaned them out on 3 different occasions. Moonie, gave me no trouble coming out of the stall. I brushed him and then took him through the same thing that So Grand did. He is much better at following me and picking up his feet to clean out than So Grand. I think overall he is about the same maybe a little above So Grand in the exercises. Both are real friendly, although Moonie takes a little longer to warm up to you. I took him out of the pen too and he actually did better than So Grand handling the new environment. They should both be ready for the farrier.