Two-fer Tuesday - Two Different Horses!

Two-fer Tuesday: “Cali and Freya”

Toimpulsivetonotice: It is “Day 4” for Miss Cali and her new life. She has seen more work and learned more new things in this short time than she has in months. Still not feeling the barn name “Cali” and keep hoping some inspired moment will happen that will tell us her “real barn name” but time will tell. It has been a bit difficult to make that connection with her on the –and we know this sounds all new age and stuff – emotional level we like to have. Part of the reason is our lives right now have some stresses and drama (non-horse related) that are tapping our reserves of energy, time and money. Being “open” to a new horse who needs emotional support and is less than eager to give up her “Professional People Trainer” union card is difficult right now. This mix is just tough. Laurie feels that “Cali” will actually be easier to connect with and train than some of our previous project horses. I am on the fence. We have had to go to some pretty firm corrections to get her to take us seriously. Still we have only had to make the correction once and it seems to stick. The trick here for the human is to have patience and let the connection happen in its own time. Not easy but necessary.

So today we skipped the round pen work. Crazy, yes. What changing it up a little does at this point is keeps it interesting. She is only 5 and her attention span is on the shorter side. So, after some nice grooming we did some Ground School Circles to get the body and brain warmed up and then did a “leadership walk” around the property. This allows a review of all that she has learned in the last sessions while giving those new skills a real purpose in her mind We did some work over some of the terrain, up and down hills and around some of the rock outcroppings. These she did great over and around. The (now dry) seasonal brook bed is about 4 to 10 inches deep and no more than 1.5 feet wide in most places. You would have thought this was the Grand Canyon we were asking her to deal with.  After a bit of encouragement and some strong reminders that running over the top of us is not acceptable she finally investigated the small crevasse and jumped over it. Several more jumps convinced her that she could do it with confidence, which she did. More playing up and down the hill, around trees and over some of the rock outcroppings gave her a really good workout and a boost of confidence.  Then we passed through the pool noodle “tunnel” and over the deadwood box. We played over the low jumps and worked on some backing exercises. The cowboy curtain did not scare her but it did confuse her a bit so we wrapped up our obstacle work there. All in all it was pretty good and other than her sometimes forgetting “personal space” boundaries which had to be adjusted she did pretty well. A long drink of water, a cool rinse off and some time on the Tree of Knowledge was how we ended Day 4. We are going to give her the rest of the week off because A) It is going to be HOT and B) we want to go out, catch her, love on her, groom her, hang out and make the connection,

Freya: Freya is heading north at the beginning of September. She is going to a great trainer, Troy Griffith of Hands-On Horse Training. He does some amazing work with warmblood breeds and after seeing some video and pictures of Freya he know he found is next project horse! We gave Freya a couple of days off but the looks we were getting said she wanted the interaction. So today we played in the upper “day pasture” with her and had a good time. We started with some free play off the lead line. She is a pretty mover. Walk, trot and lope. Checking in and getting rubs. Working on a variety of things was just fun for her.  We then hooked up the lead line, did some Ground School Circles, lateral flexion backing and Hindquarter Yields. Then she got to play on the jumps, terrain and obstacles. She seemed to really enjoy it. A long drink of water, a cool rinse off and some time on the Tree of Knowledge was how we ended the session. Everyone is getting time off until the weekend as noted above. Just hanging out, getting loved on and enjoying the fellowship.

Not a bad Two-fer Tuesday!