The GOOD, The BAD and
The Ugly: Up to this point Annie has been fairly easy to train and work
with. Even when she got a tad overloaded at the Retreat she came back to us
without much attitude. We kept waiting for the Mare Attitude to appear. After the really great session we had
yesterday we figured today would be just at nice. Silly us.
Today the Mare Attitude came out. The entire session was
less that nice. She kept making poor choices and those choices got her VERY
sweaty! She basically bitched and fussed at everything that was asked of her.
By the end of the session everyone was sweaty, tired and bit sore.
This happens when training a horse, especially one who has
its reality shifted like Annie has. The performance and expectation bar has
been raised and she is still working on the understanding of the concept that
the “right” thing is always “easy” and the “wrong” thing is always difficult.
In her past the protests got her people to back off. Well not in our barn! When
she defaulted to backing up from the request for impulsion the mecate popper
helped to motivate forward motion. When she refused to listen to seat and leg
cues (ie: right/easy) the spur got rolled up her side (wrong/difficult). The original
plan was scrapped and we simply looked for the wins. We got some nice “Susan
Circles” under saddle (works on forward movement, bend, stop, back up, yield
the hind and yield the fore), some nice Yield the HQ on the Fence and walked/
trotted through some patterns. Her lope was slow to get going and on the wrong
lead until she was “motivated” and then is was nice –fast but nice- and she
began to get the idea the crazy bastard on her back was NOT going to accept
shenanigans and attitude.
We got wins, we got improvement and we quit. At home she got
a nice long rise off and got to stand tied at the “Tree of Knowledge” to
contemplate the lesson.
Welcome to owning and training a smart, well bred mare. You
get it all in one package. Celebrate the Good, correct the Bad and never
tolerate the Ugly.
You can see a short video of Annie loading up in the trailer
and backing to some steady pressure at: https://youtu.be/akjQxW-4Xng
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