"Horse, Follow Closely"

Ok, so I nicked the title from here but it sums up how I feel about todays session with Anky.

I took her up to the school for our 5 minutes each way lungeing session, which was ok, she is definately looser than she was, more relaxed. After the session, I let her loose in the school to see how focussed she was on me. She followed me, changing direction, halting etc. I then walked out of the school across the grass track and into the field, down to the stables. I wondered if she would get distracted and either stop to eat grass or just leg it down the field to the yard, but she didn't. She followed me all the way down the field, I halted, changed directions and she just followed me. I do love this horse.

I took Remy into the picadero. I want to start lungeing him, so today we worked on him moving off from a signal, rather than just following, me walking more to the side. He seems to be getting the hang of it. He doesn't seem to worry about anything I ask him, if anything he's a little too laid back and easily loses focus. That's to be expected though. I've noticed a change in his attitude since I started work with him, he is growing up, less babyish, he's very calm now in most aspects of his training.

Corky's swelling is going down and she looks more level, I'm hoping that when the osteo sees her it won't be too serious.
It's been a good morning. I'm off this afternoon to a friends house to play piano, sax and hopefully a girly afternoon by the pool!!

Work in the school

I had a very good ride out yesterday with a friend riding Corky. Anky was jumpy, but behaved very well. She was fairly forward and relatively straight. I enjoyed it.

This morning, taking Trudi's advice, I dug the camcorder out of the cupboard and headed off with Anky to the school.
Anky was, as usual, quite distracted, took some time to settle. We worked on walk- halt-walk transitions, some good, some not so good. We had two or three quite soft halts without shuffling and then she lost focus and started to hollow into the transition. I worked on small circles, turns on the forehand which settled her and we had better transitions to the halt. If she settles in the halt, the walk transition is good with quick response to the leg. Again, better results with more genuine flexion on the right rein. On the left rein we have the same resistance stated in last post, but slightly better today, glimpses of more genuine flexion, not as set against inside leg, quicker to yield. She is sticky on the turns on the forehand, which is obvious on the video showing a lack of suppleness in the crossing over. But, all in all a good session in that I am learning more about her each time.

This afternoon, I took Anky into the picadero (bottom of the garden :-)). I wanted to try some work in-hand. I started, holding the reins near to the bit and asking her for turn around the forehand, easy, slow steps not letting her rush and once she settled we got some nice relaxed crossing on both reins.
I then asked for flexions at halt. This is something I must work on , it is the key to all the work to follow. I was happy with one or two very good flexions on each rein, quite relaxed in the mouth with light froth.
I don't know how to post the vid as yet, I'll have to open an account on youtube, but Jim took one or two pics of todays session.

This was a fairly good halt transition, but she settled a little too much on my hands.

The crossing over doesn't look too bad on this pic.

Time to think.

I went for a walk (I know, I hate walking anywhere!) with Obi up our chemin, needed time to think. Obi had a good time and it gave me time to check out my school (doesn't look much like one at the moment).

So this afternoon, the horses were up by the gate so I went in for Anky and took her straight into the "picadero" (that does sound pretentious - you know that I mean the bottom of the garden). The other three came galloping over, but Anky was really quite focussed on me. I led her and halted for several minutes and then placed my self at the side of her wth the aim of lungeing her. The rope was slack and she followed my body signals from halt, to walk, then to trot, back to walk, trot etc. She was the most focussed she has been. We were in there for about 15-20 minutes and I had her attention the whole time. To finish, I took her back to the yard, asked her to halt and stand and then just looped the rope over the tie-up whilst I brushed her off. She remained there, perfectly still.
Remy was at the gate by this time, looking for his mum, so when I put her back in the field, I brought him out (I've never taken him away from the others before) and did a little groundwork with him. He was a little distracted , mainly curiosity, I think, and quite alarmed when we went past our burning bin which was still smoking from earlier, but on the whole he was very good and most of all he was calm. So, a positive afternoon.

In the *Picadero* hee hee

By picadero, I mean an 11x11metre part of my garden taped off. (Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling)

Anyway, took Anky in there today to practice some free lunging. She loved it!!! I would like to say it was a perfect communication experience, but I would be lying. She had a great time eating the lovely lush grass.........
Seriously, the grass was quite a distraction, but after some time she started to respond to me and moved quite nicely round me on both reins. She was quite relaxed, so I take that as a great positive!