Pole to pole

Only a quick session tonight as I had to get home to cook dinner for my 2 yr old granddaughter.....

Brought Bally in and did her feet as usual, noticed the start of a split on her left fore so into trimming mode to rasp it out.....Eleanor probably won't need to touch her feet next time she comes lol!

Gave her a brush and treated her mane to some Megatek (gotta keep that hair in perfect condition lol!!) then on our way back to the field I thought sod it let's have a play in the school.

I took her in and we had a walk round - oh dear B had one of her "princess" moments and went into I'm not listening lalalalala mode because one of the other liveries was walking her horse out.

I moved her feet back to gain some attention and then dealt with a whizz round by placing her right back where she started then as she froze and went into giraffe stance I used an old NH method of gaining attention (as taught to me by a Texan cowboy & horse trainer by the name of Lewis Blackburn)......very light, quick but short downward pulls on the rope , never increasing the pressure...it's an annoyance, not a punishment and as soon as you get any response (in this case a lowering of the head which brings the horse out of an alert state) you stop and reward.....worked a treat :-) and so I now had a nice attentive Bailarina on a loose lead walking happily by my side yay!!

Now that we'd got that little hissy out of the way I let her loose while I got some trotting poles out. I love watching her at liberty, Little B gave me some super trot and that wonderful uphill floating canter - I cannot wait to experience that as a ridden partnership :-)

Anyway I put out a full line of poles for the first time (she's walked over the odd one before) - set them at walk distance and off we went - well sometimes I wonder if B has lived before, because she wasn't fazed in the slightest, we walked over each way a couple of times with her being absolutely foot perfect.

So I moved them out to trot distance and asked again.... yes!!!! Lovely elevated trot and she didn't touch a single one.

So we'll practise this in hand a few times interspersed with building on the great start to the lunge work and then eventually combine the two, there is nothing like pole work work to get the back swing and work the shoulders and quarters.

Such a great positive session - and the whole thing was less than 15 minutes of play time!!