Adventures With Horsemanship: Daddy's Little Angel & Soccer Craziness!

Daddy’s Little Angel

After the rather long and trying day we had last weekend Cearra had a bit of a sore back. Understandable. So she got time off, massages to help with the stiffness and lots of TLC. Today we started training again.

She was awesome.

We worked on the line first. Ground School Circles to warm up and then we went through all of her current ground skills. She rocked it. Then we went into the round pen. She rocked those skills too. Really focused on the “quiet conversation” and performed well. Under saddle she was soft in her body, in the bridle and really gave me 100%. She was a true pleasure to work with.

Horses. They do keep you on your toes. We’re heading over to Pioneer Park Arena again. She’ll get more of the same. We are also gearing up with our other two horses for a Medieval Horsemanship Challenge happening next month so everyone gets lots of saddle time.

Should be fun! Stay tuned!

Soccer Games, Screaming Kids, Bouncing Sunshades….Oh My!

We loaded up about 9:15am and headed to Pioneer Park Arena. Today was going to be Cearra’s first ride in the BIG arena. Of course today was the day when no less than SIX (6) soccer teams happen to set up for games and there were several parties in the park happening too. This always makes for some unique training opportunities to say the least!

Groundwork happened first. Had to get her focused on me through moving her feet and THEN we got as close as we could to the “action”. We did some exercises near all the possible horse eating stuff and when she realized it could not hurt her she was fine. Sigh. Young horses. We went through a variety of exercises that went pretty well. Then we got crazy! We introduced the Flag and the Drag-A-Bag. She ROCKED it. Didn’t bother her at all. So then it was time to put on the bridle and get in some saddle time.

We have determined that short rides (being 25-30) minutes are where she is at right now. Physically if you do more than a walk in a session that is about all the gas she has before her muscles tire out and fatigue. So we did some circles, serpentines, backing, walk/trot/lope, forward/back/forward transitions and even some work on body control through the cones and the walk and trot. All in all she did really well give the TONS of external distractions! Glad she is coming around. By the 30 minute mark we could tell she was getting pooped so we just walked around the arena for her cool down and did some big circles. Really nice ride.

Then she got to hang out in the long run and pen attached to the arena. This allowed her to watch the soccer action and stroll the entire length of the arena. In fact Ronan and I warmed up along that side of the arena (w/t/l and rollbacks) with Cearra following us along. She also got LOTS of attention from the kids and parents.

It was a good learning session for everyone.

We even shot a short video: It can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTRDbmzUfe8

Lead line