Learning what poles are all about

So Lola's done some work over poles before, but not a ton. I hauled her out to a nearby trainer to get a "starting over fences" lesson. We really do anything more than what I had been doing at home, but the trainer gave me some great things to think about.

She set the trot poles a little shorter than usual so that Lola had to really collect and pick her feet up and down instead of rushing along through them. Once I got on her we really worked on making sure she was walking over the poles straight and not wiggling back and forth through them. Its such a simple concept now, but easy to skip over, and fixing a wiggly horse when cantering a line is much more complicated than telling her now, from the very beginning that she needs to be straight, and do it herself. It gives me some good stuff to work on.

She also made some good points that if Lola is going to be most suited to a teen or amateur, then she needs to be able to carry herself over the jumps, and do it quietly and cautiously. So to some extent, I can't ride her like I'd ride another horse. I mean she needs to learn to do it, and I can ride in a way that helps her learn, but then she needs to do it on a loose rein. She needs to be a packer. That's whats going to get her a good home. It gave me something to think about for sure.

She did really well for being at yet another strange place. We ended the lesson by having her stand in the center while the other lesson came in and started. Again, so simple, yet definitely needs work. She would stand for about the amount of time it took the pokey lesson horse to make half a lap, then she'd either take a step, paw, shake her head, or turn and look out in the pasture. So we have another thing to work on.

Over all she didn't have to work hard at all. Really, we did walk and stand work today. That's it! But I left feeling like we accomplished something, and that is the whole point I guess. Plus its always a good challenge just to trailer out and work some place new. So really she did great today.