Spending a Sunday Morning With A New Girl....

Lesson #2

We wanted to review the round pen lesson. We feel strongly that once those skills are really tight and can be performed with a “quiet conversation” that the rest of the training will fall into place with a great sense of ease and purpose. Round pen skills are very foundational in nature in our program. Without them firmly in place you are building a house of cards and not a solid horse.

Establishing a direction, maintaining a specific gait, the achieving of “two eyes”, changing directions to the inside making sure that all of these elements are consistent was the goal. We achieved the goal faster than the first time we met (win!) and faster with lower effort today (WIN!!). We also introduced the Pom-Pom-On-A-Stick as a desensitizing tool. It tickled her nose and made her sneeze! We could wave it around and rub her with it without issue when she realized our body language was saying “relax” and not “go forward”. Watching that shifting of gears is always a good time!

We then broke out the saddle with a rear cinch. You never know what you are going to get when the rear cinch is added to the mix. Could be nothing (win!) or it could be a rodeo (not-win! But a teaching moment)! She was cool with the rear cinch and cool with the saddle. Since she is under weight/under muscled (especially for a Quarter Horse) we won’t ride her for a bit. We may find one of our young and skinny friends to come help with some lead line work. Her hind end is sort of flat where it should be round and the normal musculature is not developed as we would like. The formula of time, good feed and exercise will bring her back. Speaking of back, we worked on Backing with Tap the Air (better than yesterday = win!) and Wiggle, Wave, Walk & Whack. Backing up with energy is so NOT in her lexicon right now. Part of it may be her under developed hind end the other part is a mix of not knowing and lazy. We will be fixing that. It was better than yesterday so we will call that a win too! We wrapped up the session with some “follow the feel” exercises and lateral flexion.

Since we were told she doesn’t know that rinsing off feels good we did this after a nice long drink. Tied up to the Tree of Knowledge we gave her a nice cool rinse off. She liked it just fine. Then she got to think about the lesson.

Not a bad second day!