Doing awesome!

She is such a great little horse! I mean, yeah, I picked her because I thought she would be, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not totally shocked that I turned out to be right!

Tuesday morning I got up super early so that I could drag myself out to do a training session with Lola before work. I threw the saddle on this time, and bridled her up. This early-morning-before-breakfast lesson was not much to her liking, but I told her to get over it! We ponied again, all over the pasture. I talked to her and started guiding her with her own reins while I used the direction of the old mare to push Lola’s body around to follow her nose where the reins were leading. She was solid as usual.

Then the fog rolled in… and never really rolled out. UGH! Not only cold and miserable, it made everything darker. So Wednesday morning I couldn’t make myself face the fog. Thursday morning my sister had a baby!!!!! I can’t think of a better reason to miss a training session! It was awesome, and now I’m an aunt and will have another reason not to go out to the barn!

So Friday night I got right back out and faced the fog. We did some ground driving in the round pen since that was the only place I could light up with that dense of fog. She tacked up quietly, and I started by “bitting her up”, a lovely little trick to help them get the idea of giving to pressure on the bit and bending all the way through her body. Then we started slowly working her back into driving. Again, she’s learned all this before when she was first started, so it’s just a refresher course. However, you never really know just how they’ll react to these things so I worked her like she was a totally baby and had never done this before. She acted like a pro that had been doing it everyday the last three years! Walk, turn, whoa, all good. She really tries to please, and she still totally knows her stuff. I think as long as I don’t put her in a situation where she is confused, she will always progress calmly. I took off the long lines and did some more work straight from the reins. By walking at her side with my arm over the saddle I can direct her along. This way I can also start asking her to move her shoulders or haunches by directing her with pressure on her side and guiding from the rein just the way I would once I’m on top!

The really important one is to teach her to disengage her hindquarters, I’ve found this to be the easiest way to respond to emotional reactions from the horse under saddle. It works even better when there is a solid wall to turn her towards like I’ll have in the indoor arena. Situation: loud noise behind causes horse to spurt forward. Reaction: outside rein directs her towards the solid wall, outside leg pushes her haunches towards the inside thus making her cross over with her hind legs and taking away her powerful muscles to bolt off. Nothing scary, nothing harsh, nothing that will add to the emotion. Every single time I had to do this with Bear it kept the situation from escalating. Once he past that split second of panic, his mind was back on what I was asking, and he was usually calm enough to turn and look at what was going on. Very early in his under saddle training, maybe the third time we rode in the arena with other horses being worked, we had a horse bolt passed us kicking out at us, dump his rider and gallop circles! Once I had turned him into the wall he got over is initial startle and watched the horse like “What a looney!” Bear has a good sense of humor. But this is Lola’s blog, more on her.
With her ponying and ground driving going so well I’m feeling good about our next step. Saturday morning I tacked up both Lola and the old mare, and ponied her around a bit before having my mom come out and ride the old mare and learn to pony Lola in the round pen. Then I hopped on! We took it slow. I half mounted on both sides, then finally swung a leg over. She stood perfectly still. We walked on and mainly worked on just walking forward and halting. She was great, and the shoer had already arrived, so we called it quits. Quick and easy! More on her little feetsies later!