Saturday 17th April.
Well Phil headed up to the roping clinic at Grafton yesterday, so I was heading up to join him. I wanted to get all the horses fed of course, but I also wanted to work Cooper and Dicko before I left. And its raining. Yay!
So, I want to get something done, but the ground is pretty wet, and i don't want to take their rugs off and get them wet, and then put wet rugs back on etc (if anyone wants to sponsor me an indoor arena - i wont knock you back!). So I left their rugs on and decided to do 5 of the ground skills. Finding myself working basics again, by the end of it I realised how important and beneficial these skills are.
So I start with Cooper - he was already up at the top end of the paddock in the flat area, so I headed up there with stick and halter and lead in hand, he turned and saw me, and headed on over :) I love it when he is interested in what we are going to do for the day. I haltered him with his rug on, and started with desensitisation. He is pretty good in this area, but he doesn't like the string going over his head - like a helicopter. Obviously if i ever need to swing a rope or stock whip he needs to get over this, so I work on him a little each time. He is getting better and today he stood still while i was doing it - progress :)
He is happy for the stick and string to touch him all over, even if i am swinging it. I did find out that he is not real keen about me hitting it on the ground near him - he takes it as a direction to do something. So I worked on that for a while and when I got him to the point where he would stand still with me hitting the ground (still about half a meter from him), I left it and moved onto the next thing. Backup. He is pretty good at this so i can ask a bit more of him. I want it straight, and at the speed I ask, and when I ask for it. I also want him picking up and placing his feet down, not dragging them. We only did this a couple of times - he is pretty good. Next on was Yielding - to a feel (actually touching him), and to a suggestion (pointing to the area i want him to move). He is not bad at these skills, but he does tend to drift forward - both when I am moving the hind, and the front. So i worked on these a bit, and just asked him not to drift. At first he drifted, but after a few times he did It quite well so I left it alone - I asked him to yield his hind from both sides, and both to a feel and to a suggestion, and his front aswell - of course i break up which area i am asking him and how, so it doesn't all run together. I do each move (eg. move hind to a suggestion) finish it with a rub, and then either change sides, or change the area (hind to front for example).
Next up was driving. I alter the driving skill slightly, as I am also teaching him to do halter classes. So i stand next to him, and ask him to walk or trot beside me, then when I stop, I use the voice command “square up”. Initially when i was teaching him this, i would move his feet (by actually picking them up and placing them where i wanted them) while still saying square up, then once he was standing square i would rub him to show him that is what i wanted. He is progressing with this, and 3 or 4 times he has actually squared up himself. Sometimes i still have to help him, but he is getting there. Once he is square i let him stand for a while, and i move from side to side, as if I am in a halter class, so he gets used to this, and doesn't think that me moving is a reason for him to move.
So this done, the 5th skill i am doing is sideways. I decided to leave out circling and squeeze today - squeeze because i don't want to use a barb wire fence, and circling because it is too wet, and also because he still has his rug on.
Sideways went quite well today, he is great going away from me when I'm on the near side, he crosses his feet and stays quite balanced, but with me on the off side he isn’t as good. Now i do work both sides pretty evenly, but this may be a balance issue on his part, or it may be my body placement or even the way i ask him to go sideways from the off side. He does go sideways, and I have to be happy with that, but he is getting to the stage where I must continue to ask better of him (mostly on the ground) for him to be a great horse, and a great stallion. I don't like seeing stallions that cannot be handled, and I despise the people that make them that way.
I waited until i was pretty happy with sideways, and that was him for the day. I let him go and headed over the road to Dickos paddock - had to fix the gate on the way, pain in the butt, but i was glad that i actually did it. Its funny, when there is a man around all the time, i found my first reaction was “oh I need Phil” but Phil was in Grafton, so i pulled out my muscles and got it done myself :), note to self - don't be so damn lazy!
I decided to do the same 5 skills with Dicko. Got desensitisation done real quick - i can swing the stick and string at him, over his head, and hit the ground, and he just stands there - solid as a rock. Backup is pretty much the same, he goes backwards, and comes towards me. At this point, for some reason I chose driving, didn't do the yields - I was going to come back to that - not today! Dicko is ok to walk beside me, I wouldn’t say happy, but he does it - ask for a trot though - and it all goes out the window. He starts running sideways, pulling back - everything but trotting along next to me. So I just continued to ask him, and no deal. I went back to the walk, and made a really big fuss over him when he did it right. I went back to the walk as the trot wasn't working, and he was just getting more and more flustered, so i gave him something he was fairly comfortable with and made it really nice. When he was settled again, I asked him to trot, and this time the reaction was not so bad - i just kept running along next to him, and telling him that it was ok - and he settled into it. When he did a complete line with me, i left him there - took the halter off and walked away and leaned on the gate. He sort of stood for a minute, then ate some grass, and I though - great he is not even licking his lips, he doesn't even realise that I have rewarded him! But he turned around, and walked up and stood behind me.
Cool.
Time to feed them all, feed the chooks, feed the dogs, pack, shower and head to Grafton.
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