LADY and the WATER BOTTLE (blog in process...)

Lady, the most wonderful kind hearted older mare came to MRF this December (2017) to help out as a lesson horse. She came to me from the most loving woman who adores her, as expressed, "her heart horse"! And when you look at Lady she has a very open calm eye that draws you in and makes you want to hug her all day long. I am blessed to have had her presence and to learn from her throughout the winter (her kindness also helped me through some of the emotions I was feeling from loosing my dear Radu in November, she was here to help me heal in a sense) I was to share her beautiful self into the beginning of spring with my riding students...

When she came she had not done any work since that summer, so first off we needed to get her back into shape, ground work is where I started with her and of course introducing the clicker. She is a strong draft cross and she used her big head to pull me and anyone leading her around and that would not be easy for the children to handle. I did not do a formal introduction in terms of teaching her the targeting (which I usually do), instead I decided to work on getting her better at working with me on the ground at the walk and then would progress onto the lunge line as my role for her work here would mostly be from the ground.

I went into the arena and started with the WALK, a very basic but very important place to start telling her I was to be the leader and she was to be my (well behaved) follower. My "goal" was to reinforce her with the click when I halted and she was stopping behind me. The "behind me" part was the key component at first, as the lead horses nose is always out in front and thus that had to be me! When I would stop she did not stop right away and would stop in front of me so I would firmly with calm gentle and quick squeeze and releases on the lead ropes clip with my left hand turning my shoulders facing backwards and on her chest pulsing with the other hand to cue her back to the desired position, click, then treat. She was sticky and resistant to move back and Lady was not a fan of my cookies at first, she was uncertain about the walking games because she liked to lead but eventually after a while of me being mindful, calm and consistant she started to back up without much connection on the rope or chest. Stroking on her neck and "good girl" was more powerful as a treat for her at the moment. We walked in circles, on lines and halted at every different place in the arena to keep it interesting and keep her guessing. I was very careful to use body cues as well to let her know when I was about to halt by slowing down my walk and leaning my shoulders back, which was a great way to test and see if she was following my body language and since she's a horse and horses look for body language for information she became very attentive, so much so that I didn't need to touch her to move her back if she stopped in front of me and learned to stop behind me when she was calm and in the zone! It felt great when it all came together. Lady is a very smart, sensitive mare and wanted to please which made my work challenging but also very fun! After working on the halts, I started getting picky at how she halted, I started to ask her to halt without leaning in towards me and reinforced when she was squaring up her shoulders. These walking lessons happened in the arena, going to and from the stall to the arena or to the cross-ties, basically any time I handled her. We did the walking games for a few days before the next step.

Next step was the LUNGING, the walking work helped us understand each others cues and build a relationship of follow the leader, it helped us be calm in each others presence, Lady was not as easy for the lunging games but I knew that we had made positive and successful progress at the walk and surely enough we'd figure it out on the lunge line together...When you have a new horse you are working with, part of the work is to figure out how she was trained before and what cues does she know and how is she responding to me and my cues. I start by listening to her by observation of her movements in response to my cues so that you end being the best leader you can be for that horse. I observed that Lady was sensitive to the whip and thought that I wanted her to go around fast fast fast when hooked to the lunge line. Maybe back in her driving days, she was taught to be quick off the whip. So I decided to use the whip slowly and to use it for stroking her neck and keep it down while lunging - it's nice to know the whip can really get her to move off but it also needs to be a tool that can be an opposite, like scratching itchy spots and stroking her neck as a "thank you, good girl."

TO BE CONTINUED ....