Today we were in the indoor arena, after the HTM kids finished their quiz, and we did a bunch of different races. One of the races was to go to the end of the arena, get off, walk around your horse, get back on, trot a small circle, and lope back.
Now, Monkey is considered one of the "spooky" horses out of all of the horses in the class. And, at times, he is spooky. But, I got off my horse (flying dismount, which he's getting used to) told him stand, walked all the way around him, and got back on, and he never moved a foot. Meanwhile my counterpart on the other team is busy chasing their horse down the arena because the horse spooked. And that horse is considered one of the calm ones.
Also, after class, when there was only three of us in the arena, I decided to do a little experimenting, because I was bored. So, I tied my reins in a knot, dropped them over the saddle horn, and rode solely on leg signals for a few minutes. He did pretty good, nothing like a bitless reining pattern or anything, but other than some issues with stopping without the reins, and not wanting to turn into the fence a couple of times to do a roll back, he listened to my leg signals and my seat really well. We even loped circles on leg pressure alone. To the right, which is his good direction, but he did lope past the gate after a left turn, which is one of the things we've been having issues with.
I'm pretty danged proud of him, and myself, tonight.
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7 comments:
You should be proud..Both of the horse for responding, and you for not slacking up on his training. You may make a GREAT pair yet!!! I'm betting on ya...
Love Ya
Mamaw
Hun He is not " Spooky " he is alert . He likes learning new things , and honestly he has no clue on a leg cue to stop at this point since its self admitted its the first time playing . He is a smart colt and may well respond to learning better than rote , this is a problem in your classes .
No, he can be pretty spooky at times. He's trusting me more and more all the time to tell him if he needs to be worried about something, but at times he just gets spooky.
Hey, you've only been working on him for a matter of months - sounds to me like you two are doing great! Just keep heading that direction.
LOL You are gonna have him so sophisticated that I'm not gonna be able to ride him. He will think I'm just a hick.
Nah, he's not all that sophisticated. For instance I offered him some cognac yesterday and you should have seen him turn his nose up...
Maybe he's a Jim Beam or Jack Daniels kinda guy. hehe Oh, wait, I remember now... "whiskey for my men; beer for my horses." I wonder how brand-pickey a horse can be...
Just me thinking about the spooky thing... seems like a horse can trust his human partner, yet still not totally trust his surroundings... for a while, until he really clues in on what spooks his human. Kinda like I picked up somewhere about horses shying at cars or mailboxes while out on the roads... the opinion I heard was that the horse learns to spook because the rider spooks. But the rider's spooking because he automatically thinks the horse will. Sounds to me like a vicious cycle. Now, some might says Duke's a mite spooky in the evenings when he's eating and I'm grooming. Actually, he's alert too... half the times he jumps to look, it's just the deer moving through, but he'll still be calm with me. I'd venture to say Monkey'll pick up on similar stuff.
mustanger
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