Trick Training Clinic
Rusty and I, and Sunshine, and my daughter. got to go to a trick training clinic today!
How exciting was that. Clinics for anything close enough that I am willing to make the drive are rare enough. A clinic focused on tricks and close is unheard of. So we immediately signed up.
The guy, Ryan Bulkley, trains differently than I do. That is to be expected. But in his videos he was using treats to reward his horses. That and the results he was getting were all I needed.
It was a lot of fun seeing the cowboy hats and generally ranchy bunch that made up the crowd. They seemed to be a mix of working ranch and rodeo, the much more normal local horse crowd than me. And they seemed to all be interested in what was being said and in actually working on some tricks with their horses. No one balked at feeding treats.
We started out teaching horses how to move away from pressure. Then transferring it across the body to ask the horse to come towards us. Then backing, all sorts of basic body control. I really can’t even remember what all we worked on. It was a LOT. Not sure I can even remember the highlights. It was a long day and my brain is fried.
He teaches the bow out of a stretch, or parking out. I was sure my horses wouldn’t be able to do it that way because when I’ve tried they want to do Spanish walk. But we were getting the stretch today! His method there looked like a ton of fun and we will keep practicing, see if we can manage.
He let people practice giving cues on his horses. My daughter enjoyed that greatly.
Sunshine and Rusty were both wonderful. Sunshine was mostly on his best behavior. At lunch Rusty got a bit far ahead of him at the same time as he discovered the flag flying over head. He had a small meltdown. Or maybe a rather large one 😆 I got to show off the Sunshine that I’m not willing to ride to people. It was good to have someone, anyone, else actually see this version of my other wise wonderful pony. For his first time away from home doing horsey things with many other horses around Sunshine did wonderfully. He stood on the pedestal, got close to sitting on the bean bag, stood tide nicely, and managed a bit of Spanish walk despite being a bit worried about the whole thing.
Rusty was as perfect as ever. He tried his best to do as my daughter asked. He’s used to me so a different person asking was confusing and stressful for him. He starts breathing loudly when stressed. But they figured out some nice pivots and sidepasses. Rusty demonstrated fetch and Spanish walk. He happily got all four feet on the pedestal. He provided a seat for both of us when our feet got too tired to stand any longer.
It was a great day all around. There was an absolutely delicious lunch. The location was gorgeous. The people were all so very nice. I’m sure I’ll think of lots of things tomorrow that I wanted to say but forgot because I’m so exhausted from the very long day. Guess I’ll say them tomorrow!
