As The Lamb Turns
Since we had all of the drama with the lambs, I thought is would be a good idea to work on some basics with Sissy. We started with some of the same things that we have been doing all along...we just did it up by the lamb pen!
There are several things you can do in ground work that will help focus your horse, to get them to look to you for safety and trust when they get nervous. These things can be done in the saddle, but (as I've gotten older, I've found) it is better to do them on the ground. So we work on some ground skills right there beside the drama that was the lamb pen.
One of the things we worked on was yeilding the hind quarters (here is a really good article about that very subject), Sissy is pretty smart and she picked this up pretty fast, going forward we will work on the subtlety of this. How little do I have to do before she responds?
We also worked on what Parelli calls the yo-yo game. This just means that I wanted her to back away from me, while I stood in place. This is also about a person’s own personal bubble, a horse wants to be with the herd. Sometimes when it is only you and them, you are part of the heard. Wouldn’t it be safer to be able to make them back off, out of your bubble, when you are nervous? It’s also about the horse being brave enough to stand away from you, when they are nervous and scared, and learn that they can be scared…just not on top of you! This was a little harder for Sissy, specially up by the lambs, but she got better by the end.
Really all you can ask for, from a horse, is “are you better at the end of the workout, than you were at the beginning?”
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