Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Groundwork with the Horses

I was feeling a bit lazy since I spent a good amount of time on the phone this evening. So since I was feeling lazy I decided instead of riding Daisy and then working with Freedom, I would work with Freedom first and go from there. So I put him in the roundpen and worked him in there. My idea was to join up with him and just give him the basic idea of that and get him to follow me. It went amazingly well. He responds so well to body language. He started off in a trot and then when I kinda leaned in front of him and asked him to go the other way with body language, he stopped, turned and faced me, and went the other way. :) He did well going both ways. A few times he would turn with his but facing me but for the most part he faced me with his face toward me and turned nicely. Once he showed signs of wanting to join up with me, I stopped him and turned away. He came right to me, touched me and so I turned around and praised him for being such a good boy and doing such a good job. Then I got him to follow me for a bit. He did wonderfully with that although it is interesting doing these things with him after always having done them with Daisy or a horse that is older but still needs training cause I can tell just the way he does things that he is still young. It is a new experience for me but I am so loving it.

Once I put him away, I got Daisy and put her in the roundpen. I wanted to just work her a bit and get her listening to me really well. Now that I look back I should have worked her a bit more and more intentionally but I didn't and that is something I will do tomorrow. Anyway I got her to do pretty much the same thing as Freedom but with her, it is more subtle body language and such cause she knows what I expect of her as well as she is more sensitive in some ways than Freedom. :) Just the difference in the two. Tomorrow the farrier comes but I am hoping to still have time to work with the horses...we shall see!

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