How We Finally Achieved Forward
Showing off his “brain muscle”
Or playing with balls. But that seemed a little wrong.
It’s been a very busy day, in the morning we went to play with Tanna at her house with her horse. We haven’t been out to see Jerry since Tanna got her, a visit was long over due. They are doing great together, Jerry looks really good and Tanna is doing such a good job with her. We worked on haunches in, serpentines and lead departures. Jerry was pretty lazy but as responsive as she could be in her reluctance to move.
As I was getting ready to leave Tanna asked about cow work. I had been wanting to work on that with the two of them then completely forgot once we got there. So I played cow. Form the first step Jerry, looked to me at least like she, remembered it. Her laziness disappeared, ears went back and she started working. She did good for not having done any cutting for years, she always has loved to work cattle.
This afternoon I got a chance to work Rusty. Yesterday I did not get a chance to work with him. We had a little weather related issue at the time I would have had a chance and I thought it might be best to abstain.
I had been watching a video showing how to get a horse to leave you, some people have trouble getting their horses to come to them I understand, not me. The technique was intriguing and I wanted to try it on it’s own but could also see possible ways to apply it to our riding.
So we practiced targeting our favorite ball. First with me on the ground:
Then in the saddle. No video of that of course, there really is no where to set my phone. I tried a couple of different places and got lots of video of sky, weeds and the ground with us occasionally walking past. So I got a few screen shots of those brief moments. If you click through them really fast it’s almost like watching a video.
He was happy to chase his ball, he bit it and pawed it and kicked it all over. We made a couple of laps around the arena with the ball bouncing off his stomach and between his legs. I loved it, here we are on his eighth ride doing things many people wouldn’t do on an old broke horse. Granted our forward is still limited but it is improving by leaps an bounds, plus we practiced steering and he was happy and enjoying the ride. Our ball may have reached the end of it’s life, I think he killed it picking it up and flinging it so enthusiastically. My one concern was that I was going to die for sure if it popped while he was standing on it or chewing on it while I was riding him, a real horse ball might be a good idea for this. But it didn’t explode and our two dollar walmart ball served its purpose, I think we got our monies worth out of it.