Pushing Passenger/Emergency dismounts

It was a stunning day yesterday, so I was dying to get outside and work with Gypsy. I worked more on lateral flexion, turning to a stop, pushing passenger, mounting/dismounting and flipping the lead line back and forth in front of Gypsy's head while on her back.

We started, again, with Gypsy leaving when I came out to catch her. Everyone else, of course comes up to me! But she always eventually lets me approach. When I took her out, I let her graze the lawn for a while. Saddling is getting to be less and less of an issue. Today when I approached her with the saddle, she got concerned and shifted her weight back, but didn't actually take a step back. She stayed, I waited, and she eventually leaned forward and put her nose on the saddle, then shook her head and started grazing again. And she was unconcerned when I put it on her back and did up the girth.

Out in the corral we did some circling game, squeeze game and squeeze over a jump. It was pretty windy out, so she was always looking for a predator to come running out of the adjacent trees. So I just kept asking for a change of direction, backing up, more circling etc. until she settled. Then I started mounting and dismounting. She still doesn't stand for me when I put my foot in the stirrup. I can hold her there, but she won't stand unless I do. Strangely though, she will always stand still once I hop up off the ground and stand in the stirrup. So I just would mount from one side and then the other, back and forth until she stood for me on both sides when I put my foot in the stirrup. Hopefully, eventually, if we do enough of this, she'll start out standing for me right from the start.

Once I settled into the saddle, I got into my pushing passenger position and she moved off at a nice trot and kept it up for a good 15 minutes before I asked her to walk. I tried asking her to slow just by slowing my body or "stopping riding". But all she did was speed up. Obviously I'm doing something wrong! She didn't slow until I picked up the line and put pressure on the halter.

Next I started working on getting her to bend to a stop. This took a lot of time because, while I got a nice bend this time, her feet never stopped moving. After about 5 minutes of circling and circling and circling with her neck bent (and me getting dizzier and dizzier), it occured to me that I probably didn't need her to stop with the bend in her neck, I just needed her to stop. The bending is intended to disengage the hindquarters, but did she have to stay bent to stop? I just wanted her to stop, right? So I tried releasing the pressure as soon as she felt like she wanted to stop. And voila! She stopped! She stopped straight, but she stopped. So I let her stand there and think about it for several minutes while I rubbed her neck. Then we moved off into pushing passenger again. Again she started trotting and I let her. Gypsy is the type of horse that I rarely have to ask to move - it's the slowing down that's a problem! So I let her move and stayed out of her way.

Then I tried tossing the rope over her head so I could try bending her to the other side. WHOA! She didn't like that. She jerked her head sideways and sped up. Huh, well I guess we better start practicing tossing the rope from side to side! I did bend her to a stop and repeated the release when she gave the slightest try at stopping. It took a couple of attempts, but she did stop. We started with the bend and circling, but the stop was straight again.

Once stopped, I started with the rope swinging. I started with swinging the rope along side of her head, which made her move. We stopped again, I swung the rope some more, a bit slower, she kept tossing her head away from the rope. So then I leaned forward over her neck and started rubbing her head with the rope and with my hand on her head, more or less between her ears, I moved the rope back and forth in front of her face, virtually dragging it over her nose until she stopped flinching away from it and stood quietly. Then I moved my hand off her head, but just above it, and kept tossing the rope back and forth. She continued to stand quietly. So I just systematically and slowly kept tossing the rope back and forth over her head from further and further down her neck until I was back in my original position sitting up in the saddle. Lots of rubbing and reassurance. It worked! So then we tried it at a walk. She still had a tendency to speed up when I toss the rope, but this time she didn't bolt away; just walked faster. A couple flinches, but WAY better than when we started. I'll keep this up more next time.

On to emergency dismounts. I didn't have any problems with this one. I didn't attempt it at anything faster than a walk, so it went well. From both sides. Gypsy didn't seem to mind my jumping off!

After that, I called it a day. I took the saddle and lead off her while in the corral and walked away. She followed, so I started doing some turns away and toward her, stopped and backed up and she continued to mirror me! Cool! No lead on her at all! I took the saddle, saddle pad and carrot stick back to the shed and left her in the corral to graze for a while as a treat.

I didn't have my camera yesterday, nor was anyone around to take any photos. I wish I had though - especially the rope tossing, because that was a big change. Today's picture is just one of me haltering Gypsy from a while ago (not much to do with today's activities, sorry!)