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glenatronToday began with work in the A-pen. This is a pen that is narrower at one end than the other and has a pen full of cows in the middle of the wider end. The principle being that you put a cow in the pen and you can use it to train a horse to understand cows and to be able to keep a cow from the herd when needed for work like we did the other day.
Arlene gets out of the flight zone.
The two big things for the A-pen are getting the horse to understand the flight zone of the cow, the space around the animal which will cause the cow to start moving when you enter it, and the balance point, the line that will cause the cow to change direction when you cross it. The idea of the pen is that as you move the cow towards the narrow end the smaller space and the distance to the herd make it more likely that the cow will try to get back to the herd at the back of the pen.
The idea is that when the cow starts moving you need to get out of the flight zone and onto the balance point, which is likely to be between the cow and the herd. I was riding a little tiny horse for this, who felt way small for me, although he didn't seem to mind at all. He was pretty fidgety though, and something of a pest. Pony did really well, I wasn't so good at steering- when things happened I instinctively went the wrong way and let pony chase the cow rather than getting way off out of the flight zone and then circling back to the balance point.
That took much of the day as we had a few guests over for the A-pen work as well and each person had to work in turn, but in the afternoon we spent a while developing back-up.
What is different about the way that Martin teaches a horse to back up is that he really prioritises starting with the hind feet- if you want to get a really smooth backup you need it to begin the horse stepping back from behind. To get a start on that you begin by getting the hind feet moving, basically by using the indirect rein to step the hindfeet across left and right, not allowing the horse to step forward. Pretty quickly the horse will begin to offer backward steps in a really smooth way. I was riding Gus to work on that, who is pretty good anyway, but the feel was really different. Most interesting.
Having got the back up on the level we worked on it on the slope between the indoor and outdoor arena areas- backing up-hill really shows how well you've got the backup working and when it was going right the feeling was a little like going backwards up an escalator in terms of general smoothness. This was another useful exercise that is easy to work on and shows very clear results- well worth experimenting with.
Palomino noses, Indy and Maji as I recall.
Arlene gets out of the flight zone.
The two big things for the A-pen are getting the horse to understand the flight zone of the cow, the space around the animal which will cause the cow to start moving when you enter it, and the balance point, the line that will cause the cow to change direction when you cross it. The idea of the pen is that as you move the cow towards the narrow end the smaller space and the distance to the herd make it more likely that the cow will try to get back to the herd at the back of the pen.
The idea is that when the cow starts moving you need to get out of the flight zone and onto the balance point, which is likely to be between the cow and the herd. I was riding a little tiny horse for this, who felt way small for me, although he didn't seem to mind at all. He was pretty fidgety though, and something of a pest. Pony did really well, I wasn't so good at steering- when things happened I instinctively went the wrong way and let pony chase the cow rather than getting way off out of the flight zone and then circling back to the balance point.
That took much of the day as we had a few guests over for the A-pen work as well and each person had to work in turn, but in the afternoon we spent a while developing back-up.
What is different about the way that Martin teaches a horse to back up is that he really prioritises starting with the hind feet- if you want to get a really smooth backup you need it to begin the horse stepping back from behind. To get a start on that you begin by getting the hind feet moving, basically by using the indirect rein to step the hindfeet across left and right, not allowing the horse to step forward. Pretty quickly the horse will begin to offer backward steps in a really smooth way. I was riding Gus to work on that, who is pretty good anyway, but the feel was really different. Most interesting.
Having got the back up on the level we worked on it on the slope between the indoor and outdoor arena areas- backing up-hill really shows how well you've got the backup working and when it was going right the feeling was a little like going backwards up an escalator in terms of general smoothness. This was another useful exercise that is easy to work on and shows very clear results- well worth experimenting with.
Palomino noses, Indy and Maji as I recall.