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glenatronThis morning we visited sunny Inverell, which is the nearest town of any size. It was a very pleasant morning and nice to see the local area. Australia's wildlife remains extraordinary - the most everyday birds are so bright and colourful and there are so many of them. Also there were lizards and butterflies and bright autumn trees.
In the afternoon we swapped horses, so I was working with Birch. She's only a touch over 14 hands high but a sturdy quarter horse type and quite happy to carry me. Working with her on the ground I immediately felt that she was a lot easier to work with - if she finds something disagreeable she'll let you know rather than internalising it the way that Riley does, which I find quite easy to handle. She was also much quicker to tune into my life so I was able to present things to her that she could pick up on quite easily.
One realisation I had somewhere between yesterday's work and today's was that although a lot of the work that Ross does looks very similar to what I have done in the past and seen done often, it is different in its substance. The thinking underlying it is a little different.
An example of this is the work I was doing with Birch in the trot- we were tending to motorbike around the corners with her dropping all her weight on the inside shoulder. She was slightly working counterbent as well, so Ross suggested that I pick up the inside rein to create a bend around the circle but then place it against her neck to ask her to balance up and get her weight off the inside shoulder. If necessary we needed to forget the trot as long as we got the bend sorted out. Once it was fixed, the important thing was not to try to hold her in place- if she wanted to drop in again, I would just fix it up again. That way she could figure out that every time she started loading that inside shoulder I would ask her to pick it back up again. After a little while she stopped dropping in. The job here was to make the thing she wanted to do less easy, but not impossible- she could make her decision, but I would try to guide her to the decision I was asking her for.
Interestingly, Sari got on very well with big Riley horse, finding him a lot easier to ride than I do.
In the afternoon we swapped horses, so I was working with Birch. She's only a touch over 14 hands high but a sturdy quarter horse type and quite happy to carry me. Working with her on the ground I immediately felt that she was a lot easier to work with - if she finds something disagreeable she'll let you know rather than internalising it the way that Riley does, which I find quite easy to handle. She was also much quicker to tune into my life so I was able to present things to her that she could pick up on quite easily.
One realisation I had somewhere between yesterday's work and today's was that although a lot of the work that Ross does looks very similar to what I have done in the past and seen done often, it is different in its substance. The thinking underlying it is a little different.
An example of this is the work I was doing with Birch in the trot- we were tending to motorbike around the corners with her dropping all her weight on the inside shoulder. She was slightly working counterbent as well, so Ross suggested that I pick up the inside rein to create a bend around the circle but then place it against her neck to ask her to balance up and get her weight off the inside shoulder. If necessary we needed to forget the trot as long as we got the bend sorted out. Once it was fixed, the important thing was not to try to hold her in place- if she wanted to drop in again, I would just fix it up again. That way she could figure out that every time she started loading that inside shoulder I would ask her to pick it back up again. After a little while she stopped dropping in. The job here was to make the thing she wanted to do less easy, but not impossible- she could make her decision, but I would try to guide her to the decision I was asking her for.
Interestingly, Sari got on very well with big Riley horse, finding him a lot easier to ride than I do.