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Dear blog...
8 July 2009 23:47Today I did Natural Horsemanship.
I worked my pony on a line using a flag, then we did some liberty, then I rode him bareback off the halter. It was only a short session but we got some things done.
Actually, the bareback was quite a big deal for me- Zorro tends to buck when you change his tack at all, so switching from our big saddle and regular bridle to a halter and nothing else was a prime "making Zorro buck" opportunity. Consequently I've not dared do it in a long time; certainly not in the last year, probably in longer.
Somehow - probably by taking lots of pauses, giving me a chance to get used to the feel of that big round barrel shifting as we moved about and giving him a chance to feel that I was secure - we avoided any bucking, although I could feel him thinking about it a couple of times. Instead he carefully looked after me, tried napping to the gate of the school, found it didn't work and then was very well behaved. Once I'd got back into the feel of it while mooching about we even did a couple of strides of trot. Compared with what most of my horsey LJ friends do often ( I know![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
buymeaclue regularly hacks out bareback ) it was absolutely nothing, but it broke down a barrier I had built up and in that respect it was a good thing to do.
I worked my pony on a line using a flag, then we did some liberty, then I rode him bareback off the halter. It was only a short session but we got some things done.
Actually, the bareback was quite a big deal for me- Zorro tends to buck when you change his tack at all, so switching from our big saddle and regular bridle to a halter and nothing else was a prime "making Zorro buck" opportunity. Consequently I've not dared do it in a long time; certainly not in the last year, probably in longer.
Somehow - probably by taking lots of pauses, giving me a chance to get used to the feel of that big round barrel shifting as we moved about and giving him a chance to feel that I was secure - we avoided any bucking, although I could feel him thinking about it a couple of times. Instead he carefully looked after me, tried napping to the gate of the school, found it didn't work and then was very well behaved. Once I'd got back into the feel of it while mooching about we even did a couple of strides of trot. Compared with what most of my horsey LJ friends do often ( I know
buymeaclue regularly hacks out bareback ) it was absolutely nothing, but it broke down a barrier I had built up and in that respect it was a good thing to do.