Sissy - 6/24/13

Started today with groundwork.  Boring, huh?  Most everything that is done in horse training is repetition….to see something done the same way, every time, is pretty boring.  Except to the horse, the horse wants consistency.  So we began like we do everyday…groundwork…where’s her head?  Is she connected to enough to me to pay attention?  Every horse is different, some take longer to get with you…you have to deal with the horse that shows up.  Sissy got “with” me pretty fast today.

The plan was to drive her today.  So that is what we did next.  Driving is a funny thing, funny in that a lot of people think you can just hook long lines to the front of the horse, run those lines down either side and go to driving.  This approach usually leads things getting a little western.  If you have not prepared your horse to bend both directions and to be able to stand those lines touching them front to back…then prepare for a rodeo.  If you have, like I have done with Sissy, then this is almost an anticlimactic experience.  I put a snaffle in her mouth (nothing hooked to it, just letting her carry it around) and I drove her for about 30-40 minutes.  She acted like she had done it all her life.

So I thought I would just step up on her and ask her to move, with minimal direction.  Now the stepping up on part still kinda bothers her.  She will lay her ears back and fling her head up and down.  Some of this is her voicing her opinion, some might be it hurts her when I step up.  I will do two things starting tomorrow.  One, change to a thicker saddle pad and two, more work on the pushing/pulling/hopping thing.  If this is just her voicing her opinion….well then she will have to learn that this isn’t the end of the world.  If the pad is too thin, then the saddle is hurting her…change to a thicker pad…maybe even a different saddle.

Enough of what I’m going to do tomorrow.  Today, I stepped up on her and asked her to move out.  I did not have reins attached to the snaffle (I put it on over the top of the halter), I just want her to carry it around and get used to holding it in her mouth.  So we moved out, with  some direction from me, I just wanted her to move.  She really did well.