Adventures With Horsemanship: HAPPY NEW YEAR! Jazz

DAY 3 New Year’s Day: SECOND ROUND PEN SESSION

We had a New Year’s Eve gathering that joyfully spilled over into New Year’s Day. After all the guests headed home we headed out to do some work with Jazz. Knowing that “feel and timing” may have been off today because…well…celebrations…we made today a review of yesterday’s exercises and then introduced two new ones. We also wanted to keep things easy for Jazz as this was his third day in a row. Being a bit out of shape mentally and physically, Jazz needed a review to help things really soak into his brain.

We worked at liberty first. Desensitized with the stick-and-string followed by establishing consistent direction and gait. That went well. Jazz still gets a little confused at higher speeds when asked to turn inward towards the middle of the pen but with some consistent cues he caught on more readily. We review getting the draw from both sides (his right side is weaker) and some of the other exercises and then moved into line work. If we were to rate Jazz’s performance in the round pen from Day 2 we would give him a 4 on most things. Today we saw more 5’s. Tomorrow we hope to see even more improvement. We added the “lead by the foot” and “yield the hind end with rhythmic pressure” today. Overall not bad. It will be interesting to see how tomorrow goes.

Wednesday through Friday we are expecting some rain/snow so this may limit what we can do with the horses but we will be consistent in our actions and continue to get the improvements we want.

Jazz is now in the big pasture with Argent and Ronan. Everyone is getting along nicely!

Still sort of braced but better.