TWO WEEKS: Where Are We At? Where Are We Going?

TWO WEEK MARK: Where Do We Go From Here?

We have hit the two week mark with Toimpulsivetonotice (her barn name is still Cali as nothing else has come to us yet.) and overall her progress is pretty good. Training from this point forward is going to be about reviewing the previously learned skills and adding more to her “tool box” so she continues to grow in confidence as well as improve her conditioning. There will be lots of travel in thus young lady’s reality in the months ahead and lots of new experiences that she will have to learn from. It truly is a journey that takes time. Every encounter with her is a training moment. The human has to be consistent, clear and fair all the time. There will be times when we will have to take a step backwards in order to progress forwards. There will be ugly days. There will be days of sheer brilliance! When all is said and done the goal is always to have more “good days” than “bad days.”

In our experience, the two to three week mark is usually when the first “big ugly” day happens. Because reality has shifted for the horse – going from being a hay vacuum and doing very little to being worked with on a regular basis and expected to learn and grow, not to mention a change is social structure and status – the “big ugly” day is a time of major push back and acting up. So far it has not happened yet (which is nice) but we are remaining vigilant about it. The recent training sessions have been good and on some exercises even borderline great. Improvements have happened. Shifts in attitude have happened. Now we begin to slowly raise the “expectations/performance bar” while we remain consistent. This is always a fun time in the relationship.

The recent sessions have happened at home and local arenas. She is getting better at being in new places. Our last session (Monday) happened at the El Dorado County Fairgrounds Area. Our gal got worked first and showed some real improvement in getting connected, reading her human, response, performance and emotional control. It was really nice to see. She got two sessions last night. One at 5:30pm for about an hour and one again at 8:30 for about thirty minutes. Good work happened. She also met a new person (a friend of ours visiting from Minnesota) and they did some ground work together (or friend later took Ronan for a spin). All in all it was a productive day and we are feeling pretty proud of this mare. She is gaining some muscle, fitness and weight overall too. It is a process but we see progress which keeps us motivated.

 Ronan and Lisa