The lesson horse
30 January 2010 23:21![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glenatronA wondrous sunny day arrived this morning, best spent in the company of ponies and fine friends. This afternoon ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teadog1425 came over so I could explain some things about one rein stops and how we're learning to do stuff with Steve and she could maybe have a sit on Zorro and feel it a bit for herself. She's wanting to build her confidence up a little and having a solid stop is a great help with that and Zorro knows this stuff backwards.
Zorro was a bit out of practice at doing things- fair enough, we haven't really done any work in the last two weeks, so it took a bit of work with the flag to wake him up and remind him that there is a human he knows how to listen to and we worked through some of the starting points we work with - the turn away to set off leading and disengaging the hindquarters for a stop. When we had talked through that and tried it a few times to get a feel of it, we chucked Zorro's bridle on and I hopped on.
Zorro, realising he had someone new who might be going to ride him, immediately set to bucking around in a circle, just so I was aware of his displeasure, in his regular grumpy protest bucks. When he realised I was just going to keep asking him to walk on he did that instead and then when we got to the far end of the school put in a proper full on bronc, just to be sure. I stayed with him and from that point forward he was pretty well behaved, every inch the confidence-builder there. It was actually pretty good because it did mean she got to see how I use that technique when he's feeling a bit bumptious, although mostly I was just swinging my mecate and asking him to get on!
Once he had settled a bit,teadog1425 did have a bit of a ride on him and he was really good, helping her to get the idea of what I meant about the direct and indirect rein from the saddle. Once he knows he is supposed to be looking after someone he responds with a carefulness that belies his misanthropic demeanour.
It was a good day to be outside and a pleasure to be riding and talking about riding and finding another imaginary internet friend to be pretty awesome in real life as well- this tends to happen a lot, so I guess we must be good at finding imaginary internet friends.
teadog1425 came over so I could explain some things about one rein stops and how we're learning to do stuff with Steve and she could maybe have a sit on Zorro and feel it a bit for herself. She's wanting to build her confidence up a little and having a solid stop is a great help with that and Zorro knows this stuff backwards.Zorro was a bit out of practice at doing things- fair enough, we haven't really done any work in the last two weeks, so it took a bit of work with the flag to wake him up and remind him that there is a human he knows how to listen to and we worked through some of the starting points we work with - the turn away to set off leading and disengaging the hindquarters for a stop. When we had talked through that and tried it a few times to get a feel of it, we chucked Zorro's bridle on and I hopped on.
Zorro, realising he had someone new who might be going to ride him, immediately set to bucking around in a circle, just so I was aware of his displeasure, in his regular grumpy protest bucks. When he realised I was just going to keep asking him to walk on he did that instead and then when we got to the far end of the school put in a proper full on bronc, just to be sure. I stayed with him and from that point forward he was pretty well behaved, every inch the confidence-builder there. It was actually pretty good because it did mean she got to see how I use that technique when he's feeling a bit bumptious, although mostly I was just swinging my mecate and asking him to get on!
Once he had settled a bit,
teadog1425 did have a bit of a ride on him and he was really good, helping her to get the idea of what I meant about the direct and indirect rein from the saddle. Once he knows he is supposed to be looking after someone he responds with a carefulness that belies his misanthropic demeanour. It was a good day to be outside and a pleasure to be riding and talking about riding and finding another imaginary internet friend to be pretty awesome in real life as well- this tends to happen a lot, so I guess we must be good at finding imaginary internet friends.