Last week was a blur between work and my other activities. I've always kept a little calendar in the car to keep track of the horses' turnout, riding, and lunging, but with both kids home the car swapping is getting a little crazy and I haven't been too good about keeping up with the calendar. Consequently I'm sitting here trying to remember when I rode Bestie last week, other than my Wednesday lesson. Hmmn.
She was pretty good on lesson day. Basically she tries to go outside after a couple of loops around the indoor, but she didn't fight me when I kept her inside. I rode her around at the walk for several loops while Emma and I talked about her behavior over the past couple of weeks. We discussed what I could do to calm myself down when she misbehaves (deep slow breathing, putting balanced weight in my core, thinking positively and not fearfully) and then moved on to what I could try with her when she gets all worked up. Emma thought it would be useful to train her to respond to a command to drop her head, to train her so thoroughly that it would be second nature to her when I gave the command. The thought was that it would be hard for her to act up with her head dropped, and apparently it's calming both to have it in that position and to respond to a familiar request.
So I got off and Emma got on to teach it to her. The first couple times circling around, Bestie kept fixing her eyes on me, a bit wild-eyed, like she wasn't sure about this situation. I'm the only one that has been on her in a long time. Emma must have stayed on her for almost half an hour, gently pulling on the left rein, and immediately releasing when Bestie dropped her head even a tiny bit. By the end of the session, she was dropping her nose to about 6-7 inches off the ground. It was interesting to watch her process the training. She definitely thinks about everything, and initially would often do the drop but then jerk her nose out a bit, like, "Ok, I did what you wanted. But I'm only doing it because I want to, NOT because YOU want me to." She just had to add that little extra nose punch of attitude. She's definitely smart, which is, as Emma says, "a blessing and a curse."
So now I need to get on her and keep doing it, and work on the right side, being careful to release as soon as she dips her head. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to ride. I didn't get to spend much time at the barn today, just enough time to groom them both and clean up their stalls. Dude had four bald strips on his rear end right by his tail where the hair had been scraped clean off by one of his pasture mates. He's been looking pretty good for a week or so, and I thought they had all settled down. Time to get the A&D ointment out again.
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