Playing with Indy

I spent about 4 hours playing with Indy on Saturday this past weekend. My goal was to be able to saddle her from the right without her trotting off, and if I had time to ride, then bonus! But riding wasn't my plan, just the saddling. (However, as you can see in all the photos, I did get to ride too!)

My neighbor Dani brought her young mare over as well to do some work in the round pen, so I helped her out a bit too. At the end of the session with her, she suggested we get together every Saturday morning to play with the horses. I'm all for that!! It was great having someone else to do horse stuff with. And I think I may have ALMOST convinced her that this Parelli program might be worth trying. Dani really likes Stacey Westfall and has been watching her videos to help her with her horse. I also think she's great, so if Stacey's videos helps her with her horse, I fully support her.

It took nearly 2 hours to get the saddle on Indy quietly. Well, that's not quite true because I spent the first hour grooming, then playing the 7 games with her, partly using the saddle as an obstacle. So working SPECIFICALLY with putting the saddle on her was about an hour. And because I was using the western saddle, I can't even begin to tell you how tired my arms were at the end of it!! I used the western saddle because she only trots off when I swing the western saddle up on her, not the english one. It's Monday today, and my shoulders are still sore. I started with swinging the saddle pad on and off her for a long time from both sides until she just ignored me and started looking for grass. Then I spent a lot of time just lifting the saddle up her side and resting it on her back. From both sides. Then I would swing it from her left side (which she doesn't object as much to as with her right). She still didn't quite stand quietly, so we did lots of repetition. Then I had to rest and I yoyo'd her some more to and from the saddle. Boy that saddle was getting heavy! Then I pretty much worked exclusively from her left until I could swing the saddle up without her trotting off. I wouldn't say she was COMPLETELY relaxed about it, but she didn't trot off. She tensed, but stayed put. I left it at that, because really, I probably couldn't have lifted the saddle up again anyway! I will repeat this again over the next week or so (once my shoulders recover) and hopefully each day will get a bit better.

Then I let Dani have the round pen and I took Indy off into the paddock and worked on getting her to move off my leg. Initially, I wasn't picky about where she went, just that she move and keep moving when I asked her. She had no trouble walking/trotting TOWARD the gate, but I really had to work to get her to move AWAY from the gate. So I tried using the barrels, like Linda suggests: get her to go to the barrel, then rest. Then go to the other barrel, then rest. She was still pretty distracted by Dani and Tommie working in the round pen, so she often overshot the barrel (or would go past the other one and continue to the gate), so I tried to not worry about the barrel so much as the fact that I gave her a reward for getting from A to B (whether A was the gate or the barrel or B was the round pen or the barrel). Not sure if I should have been more insistent on the barrel (as in the photo to the left here where it looks like I'm barrel racing, but really just asking Indy to stop at the barrel), or if it was OK just to give her a point to go to and stop. I think I should have been more insistent on the barrel (consistency), rather than letting her choose the place to stop and letting her pass the barrels to where she wanted to go. Anyone reading this... I'd love your opinion!

In the end, she was actually objecting less and less to moving away from the gate though, and we even trotted quite a bit. She's doing quite a bit better than Skittles with impulsion, so I was pleased with that. So maybe I shouldn't be too critical. I don't know. Seems the more I learn, the less I know!

I got off and on her a few times (mostly to help Dani in the round pen), and each time I got off she thought she was done. So each time I got on again, she gave me a bit of attitude when I asked her to go again (stomping feet, tossing head, even a little mini-buck). But nothing too serious.. just expressing her Left-brained opinion. I just ignored it (didn't release) and continued to ask until she responded appropriately. The photo above shows her objecting a bit to me asking her to move off my leg and away from the gate (head up, ears back).

One other thing I noticed was that she zig-zagged a lot (had difficulty going in a straight line). Mostly, I think, because I was asking her to go somewhere she didn't want to. I tried to keep aiming her at the barrel, but she rarely got there in a straight line. Maybe that was another reason I should have been more insistent on stopping at the barrel... so she'd get the message that's where I wanted to go and that's where she would get her rest. I also (in hindsight) probably didn't repeat that enough for her to understand the pattern. Oh well. It was a pretty decent ride, she responded fairly well to my leg commands, and we're making progress! We'll eventually get straigher lines and keep her moving for longer distances.