Calm obedience

Colonel is making progress. On wednesday I put on my music and took him out to do some trotting around. We're working on calmness and a willingness to bend correctly and to stay of the damn rail. He only threw a could of bucks the whole time. He was a pill about moving off my leg and supporting himself with his inside shoulder. When he calms down a little more I'm going to take a crop out there and re-enforce my leg aids. This will probably hype him up further but, what am I going to do?

Star is working on WTC calmly. Not only calmly really but willingly keeping the pace that she should. We need to work on transitions also, but I believe in one thing at a time as much as possible. I also want to start clicker training her over the jumps. I truly believe she's not afraid of the jumps but she has no substantial motivation to go over them. The other thing I need to do is some training re the appropriate response to the use of the crop. Right now she likes to rear, back up or spin. Not OK. I tried just cropping her until she moved forward but she got herself turned towards the fence and did a pretty good rear so I turned her and then she moved forward but again, she'd evaded the aid. I'm not getting a good forward response from the crop so, more work is needed there. I guess I need to just keep hitting her until she goes forward and try to ignore the rearing. If the rearing gets sufficiently bad I'll see if I can do an emergency dismount and beat her into submission from the ground. It sounds bad to say it like that but rearing is dangerous and against the rules she knows it so a good cropping might do her good.

Keno also needs a crop to support my leg but I suspect it wont take much. He just wants to be reminded that he needs to do as he's told and I think that will be that.

groundwork day

I worked three horses today.

I got Tilly out and we talked about how a broken fence board does not mean she is free to gallop around like a lunatic. She wasn't the easiest horse to calm down but, I'm suitably pleased with her.

Colonel was quite good. We worked on transitions between trot and canter. Especially transitions that involve no death trotting or head flipping.

I put long lines on Libby. What a mess. She has a neck like a bull and she knows it. She got away from me and ran off to eat grass and pester Tessa. I put a crupper on the surcingle (I had neglected to do this earlier) and then ran the reins through the bit and back to the surcingle. "Power steering" is what Robert calls it. When Libby discovered that pulling on my hands caused pulling on the underside of her tail, she was pissed. Eventually though I had her minding her P's and Q's like a lady.

Rode Colonel

I rode Colonel yesterday at Roberts request. There is someone who might lease him. I gave him a good lunge going mostly to the right. Lots of transitions and cantering until he quit acting like an idiot. It actually went really well. Then the time came to hop on him. I have to say I felt sick. This was faster than I had planned on starting him but I needed to know how he'd be to canter. I can't say he wasn't a jerk, but I also can't say it was especially terrifying. Scary, yes, but terrifying, no. I only cantered him under saddle to the left. It was like riding one of those pennies that you set rolling down those funnel shaped plastic things at the mall. Kept falling further and further in, round and round we went. He was leaning so badly that I couldn't stay in the center of the saddle and still stay straight up and down. I thought I must have rolled the saddle putting too much weight in one stirrup. Nope, he and the saddle were still perfectly in line, just happened to be most of the way sideways. I'm actually pretty pleased with how upright I managed to stay, not that pleased with my inability to feel where the horse is relative to the saddle but hey, it scared me into keeping off the stirrups like a good girl. Not that those stirrups were of much help anyway. I left them quite long.

In the end, he really only threw one buck, and basically didn't flip his head or do that weird cock your head to the side and stick it up in the air at the same time thing. He did pull but not all that violently. He did try to run us into a wall but didn't quite manage it. He was tense and downhill and a little rough to ride but I always had the sense that we could stop if I wanted to, and he wasn't going anywhere near the kind of speeds I know he's capable of, possibly because we just did circles and he didn't get a chance to go straight down the arena.

He didn't break a sweat.

Star is making progress stretching the right hind leg in the trot. I had a huge fight with her about trotting to the right and she cantered an absurdly tiny circle and refused to break back into the trot. I think it goes without saying that she cantered this circle with her head and tail so high in the air they were practically touching. After I won the fight we did some good work and I'm pleased with her progress so far.

I took Tilly out too. The arena was crowded so I just walked her around and reminded her about where she needs to be relative to my shoulder. It was good practice. The other horses were very distracting/upsetting for her but in the end we reached an understanding.

Lame-o trots

Worked Star and Papillon today. Star's trot is terrible. I knew that already, I suppose, but watching from the ground really gave me new insight. Her right hind is so weak its amazing. I try to ask her and bend and use it more and she looks almost lame. I'm going to continue the lunge work to focus on that leg, and continue lots of walking to build the muscle. I've been just getting on her with just her halter (and Alyssa's reins clipped to the bottom of it) after I finish the lunge work and we walk around while I listen to music. This is Star's kind of work out. Minus the trotting on the lunge of course.

I walked Papillon in-hand for 20 minutes and did another 30+ minutes of walking. She wasn't really sound to trot. I'm not that worried about it. This is only the second week of having her out and she'll get stronger.

I need to get Lady and Colonel into the mix somehow. Too bad I cant pony Lady off of Papillon or visa versa.

Banishing the blahs

Ok, I'm starting to feel pretty good about how things are going. I'm still sore from riding a few to many horses. Funny how we'll take care to keep the horses from getting too sore but ourselves, meh. Anyway, Star is slowly slowly starting to straighten out at the trot. She is one crooked horse. Even her fat distribution is crooked. Papillon is getting stronger I think, but I'm taking it slow with lots of hand walking before riding. Colonel and Lady still need more attention. Lady is ready to start her strength training too. Lots and lots of walking. Probably warm her up with handwalking also. It really helps when they start feeling good and therefore start feeling like trotting, if I'm on the ground I can put a swift stop to it without causing any trouble with their mouth.

Groundwork, fitness and a case of the blahs

I think I want to go back to posting regularly on this blog. I need something to help me track my progress.
As the title implies, I'm on kind of a groudwork kick right now. I'm following the instructions in the book "Horse training in hand: A modern guide to training in hand." I want all my horses to be reaching under themselves and really lifting their backs with their inside hind leg when we're on a circle. Eventually I'm going to be working everyone on their lateral work too. I'm trying to be very patient and not skip any steps. Right now Lady, Colonel, and Star are working on their proper walk.

I walk beside them by their shoulder with a dressage whip and my leading hand extended. If they aren't bending right I put my driving hand on their neck or shoulder and vibrate the line to invite their head in. All three horses are wanting to swing their hips out instead of bending. I'm trying to be persistent and not let up with the pressure on their neck/shoulder until they bend for me and then I release the pressure. Eventually I need to be able to just vibrate the line and point at their shoulder and they need to respond by bending nicely.

The idea is that then when we go to our lunge line work, I can signal them to do the right thing without having to shrink my circle again. Furthermore, if they get the idea at the walk, I can use the same signal for the trot and eventually the canter.

Lady also needs a little help extending her inside hind. This is simpler to accomplish. I just have to give that leg a little tap just as the outside fore is about to lift off the ground. Sometimes Lady prefers to trot rather than extend, but she's getting over it.

Papillon apparently already walks like I want her to, so she'll be moving on to lunge work. Papillon will need conditioning as much as anything else.

After the lunge work is done with Colonel and Star, they'll be lunged in side reins. At first very loose and gradually shorter as they gain their balance back at each new length. I'm feeling impatient to get to this step, but I'm committed to doing this right and building the neccessary muscles before moving to the next step.

In theory all these ground work exercises can be used just to warm up before a ride. I have been feeling very blah about riding lately. I'm waiting for that to pass but if it doesn't pass soon I'll have to force the issue.

Only managed to get around to riding today by 1 pm. No shock there I
guess, but I really should try to find a way to get to the barn
earlier in the day.

Anyway, I finished warming up star right at the stroke of 1, which is
perfect for my new mission. (Nobody roll their eyes now.) I need to
stop riding for such short periods of time, so I'm trying to keep
track of how long I've actually been riding, rather than how long it
feels like. So I'm implementing kindof a parelli thing (again people,
no eye rolling) where we start our post warm-up with incrementally
more amd more continuous trotting. We're working up to 30 minutes in
five minute intervals. Turns out my attention span is about ten
minutes, so today we did fifteen. In theory you go straight from your
trot to whatever your real work is that day. Transitions, cantering,
circles, patterns, lead changes, whatever. I'm not totally clear on
the specifics.

So for us today we did our fifteen minutes one way, then we just did
fifteen minutes the other way and then quit. I vow to go longer in the
future, but I'm pleading sleep deprivation on this one. There was,
however, a little twist on all this trotting. We did all of it in the
field on the west side of the indoor arena. Turns out, that field has
a non-negligible slope to it. Definitely enough to be beneficial to
muscle development. It took quite a while to convince star that we
werent planning on doing the jumps in the field there. She did
eventually calm down and switch over to the project of trying to
convince me that a nice lazy pony ride was the way to go.

Still, I think I managed to get some good work out of her. Especially
when we were headed up the slope.

I hand walked Papillon around the field. Sleepwalked is more like it.
She loosened up by the end but I didnt ride her.

I took Libby out to lunge and she tried once to change directions and
she pulled more than I like and rushed more than I like but mostly she
was fine. After a short lunge we worked on mounting block standing. We
walked around the block and sniffed the block, and then came the
exciting part. I started scratching her whither and then stepped up to
the first step, then the second. She was too engrossed in expressing
her enjoyment of the scratching to notice. I stepped off and stopped
the scratching. I stepped back up and she shied away, but I reached
out to scratch her anyway. Stepped down, moved mounting block, she stood there suspicious but anticipating her scratchies.

I went to put the mounting block away and I stood on it one last time so she could look at me, but she walked over and presented her whithers for scratching. Score. I knew I was going to like training an itchy horse.