Indy under saddle

After I worked with Jake yesterday, I also spent some time with IndyAnna. I wanted to try her in a saddle and see how she'd handle being mounted from the ground. After some ground work, friendly game, driving game and circling game again, I got the saddle. Immediately she started nosing and licking it like she does most everything. She didn't flinch at all when I put it on her back, but rather turned and sniffed the saddle and mouthed it a bit - definitely more curious than scared. I only have 2 girths - one is too small and the other is nearly too big. I used the bigger one, but it was on the last hole on both sides of the saddle. Even at that it wasn't as snug as it should have been because it slipped a bit when I was mounting up.

I mounted and dismounted several times on her left side and after each time I'd move her around just to make sure she wasn't freezing up and going introverted. Although all her other behaviour didn't suggest she was bothered in any way (blinking, head low, looking from side to side). I also worked on getting her to bend her head from side to side to make sure I could bend her to a stop once on her back. I then rode her around the round pen. Getting her to stop is not a problem! Getting her to go is a whole other story. For about half hour I would go from phase 1 to phase 4 in leg pressure to get her to move forward. Each time I'd have to go to phase 4 before she'd move, I'd release, and she would stop. It was quite a while before she'd move more than a couple of steps, but then finally she took 4 steps, then 6 and soon after that she made it once around the round pen before stopping. Yay! It'll be a while before we're trotting, but for now it's one step at a time, literally!

After we were all done I put Holly up on her back and led her around the pen. She was just like an old hand at this! I'm very pleased with her so far.

Jake - avoiding me

For about the last month or two Jake has been avoiding me. He is acting very unlike himself and I can't figure out why. Jake is my 11 year old ClydeX gelding who is the herd leader and who has always been solid as a rock: dependable, friendly and affectionate. For some reason though, the past several weeks he's been acting very afraid of me (or anyone for that matter) every time I walk up to him, he won't look at me, and turns his head completely away from me (like in the first photo) and if I continue to walk toward him he walks away. Jake has always been one of the first horses to come up to me and start nosing around my pockets for treats. So it's really strange for him to not only avoid me, but to be acting so afraid of me. Obviously I've done something that has scared him, but for the life of me, I can't think of what!

So today I started working with him in the round pen just to see if I could get him to first look at me; 2nd: not turn away from me when I walked up to him and 3rd: get him to follow me. I filled my pockets with crunchies to use as treats for when he either came up to me or turned toward me. Lately treats haven't inticed him to come up to me in the pasture (again, very strange since he always was the first one up to me), but maybe if he's alone with me it might help.

I started just moving him around the pen in different directions and allowing him to stop if he turned in to me. If he looked away or turned away, I'd push him away again. Then after a few times turning toward me, I would walk up to him and see how close he'd let me come before turning away and worked on getting that distance shorter and shorter until he'd reach out and touch my hand without turning away. Surprise! A treat! I backed away and then approached his left shoulder, he didnt' turn away, but neither did he turn toward me. I draped my arm over his head and asked him to lower his head and turn toward me. He's always responded well to this and today was no exception and when he turned his head toward me he got another treat! I went around to his right side and he immediately turned away from me. He's always been uncomfortable with me on his right side. But I stayed there and rubbed him all over until his head was facing forward. I then put my arm over his neck again and asked him to lower his head and turn toward me. Some resistance, but he did and got another treat.

We kept this up for a while working on reducing the resistance and then I moved away to see if he'd follow. He did, licking and chewing and he started acting like the old Jake I know and love. I decided to do a few of the Parelli games with him just to refresh his memory and he did great. So I thought I'd climb up on the fence and see if he would mind my getting up on his back. He moved along side me and didn't try to avoid me when I leaned over to mount up. He had a very positive look on his face, so I just did some pushing passenger in the round pen for a while and then opened the gate and continued pushing passenger into the paddocks with the other horses. He had his head low and was licking and chewing the whole time, so we called it a day and I let him out to graze on the lawn for a few minutes. Will see if his behaviour changes at all over the next few days when I come up to him. It was a pretty good day.

Catching up

It's been a while since I logged anything on this blog, but not because I haven't done anything, but because I've been too lazy to log it.

Indy has been coming along great. I haven't done much else besides sit on her and get her to move off my leg and turn and back up. I've done lots more ground work with her - working on the driving game and circling game. She's pretty good at yoyo now and with the porcupine game. But she was having trouble with yielding her hindquarters on her left side, so we worked on the driving game. When I asked her to yield on her left, she'd go forward rather than yield. She did great on her left, but it took some time before she'd yield on her left. But we made it. Will see the next time I work with her if it sticks.

We've worked quite a bit on the circling game because she tends to only move a few steps at a time before stopping. I probably played the circle game for 30-40 minutes before I could get 2 complete cirlces (let alone 4!) without her stopping before I asked her to stop. For the longest time, she'd stop as soon as I stopped asking. She couldn't quite figure out that if she kept going I'd leave her alone! But I'm hoping she'll catch on a bit quicker next time.

Skittles is now back at Ken's (the trainer's). Ken did a fair bit of ground work to see where her head is at since the last time he saw her, such as yielding and then leading from a rope around her foot. I've worked on this a fair bit with her, so she did quite well with this. Then he put the saddle on her. Once he got her moving, she bucked a bit, but settled quite quickly (from my perspective anyway). Since I've had the bareback pad on her several times with the girth done up, this was only slightly more scary with the additional weight and the stirrups hanging from it. After a while, she barely acknowledged it except to look back and sniff it once in a while (good sign -- shows she's more curious than scared!). The last thing Ken did was sit on her - he got on her from the fence, rather than mount up. He mostly just wanted to make sure she didn't object to having his leg swing over her, rub her side, bump her back etc. etc. He also threw the lariat out in front of her and dragged it back to see how she'd react to having it coiled up above her. She stood fairly quietly. She watched it with her head high, but didn't adversely react in any way. I expect he'll be riding her next session and the rest of the month will be building from there. She's been doing really well. I'm a bit slower, but I think I'm making pretty good progress with Indy too.