POST RETREAT SESSIONS & FOCUS

POST RETREAT SESSIONS: Well the 2016 Spring Retreat is behind us now. As always the experience is awesome for both horses and humans. For a great mare like Annie the experience helps her to gain personal confidence while helping her humans to sculpt her on-going training and conditioning to fill in any gaps as needed.

Annie is a trail diva in many ways. She likes to be on the trail and has a great trail walk and trot. She is alert and attentive on the trail which is great. She at times needs to be reminded that she is not in charge of the situation (simple redirection of her feet reminds her of this) and that it is okay to “trust” her person to not put her in unsafe situations. We also discovered that she likes to bond a bit with her person. Just getting on and going with a stranger is not “fun” for her. If the new person loves on her a bit, does some respect building groundwork and then rides it goes great.

So now that we are home we are going to be working on “getting more with less” meaning more softness and responsiveness with less “loud” body language and cues under saddle. We will also be loping her around quite a bit! She has a FUN lope! Once she gets conditioned to shifting her weight a little farther back the lope will be REALLY FUN! We are going to be focusing on getting all of her body parts soft to cues which will help her with confidence and condition too. We will also be exposing her to more group settings in smaller arenas. Sadly, most of the group events we attend have large arenas to play in (which is awesome for the humans) so we will do the best we can.

She has come such a long way and we could not be more proud of her development. She is a very special horse who likes people and likes to have a job. The more we work with her the more talent we find. We will continue along this theme of training in the weeks ahead.

Some pictures from a recent session working on some fun stuff!