On Saturday I enlisted the help of my old college roommate, Sheila. I have been wanting to get Rosie trotting on the leadline for awhile. I had grand visions of entering some halter classes this summer, not because she is a halter horse but just for the experience. However, I have no way to get to any shows sooooo, that little fantasy is on the back burner for now. I still wanted her to trot on the lead with me though. Rosie is a pretty easy going horse and really doesn't see the need to expend energy needlessly so my efforts in getting her to trot along beside had proved futile. I had heard that one way to get them going was to have one person do the leading and then another person come up behind them with a whip of some sort to provide a little encouragement. This was the route that we decided to go. Rosie totally understands lunging so we had that on our side for this little training session. At first she was like "you want me to do what?" but then with a little wave of the lunge whip and a lot of clucking she finally figured it out. Not before Sheila and I were totally out of breath though. We had to trade being the leader and the whip person back and forth a few times. It had to be the altitude, right? Anyways, Rosie picked up trotting on the lead pretty quickly, which our out of shape bodies were quite thankful for.
Next we moved onto putting a saddle pad and surcingle on. I had done this once before with Rosie but it was like back in June and with our move this summer I just hadn't gotten around to doing it again. The only thing she really seemed to care about was the tightening process and all she did was turn and look at what I was doing. I didn't cinch her up real tight, just enough to keep everything from sliding all over. After I got it on, I sent her out into the round pen and free lunged her for a bit. She did just one small yee-haw kick and that was it. I didn't lunge her for too long as it was in the 50's and she still has a pretty good winter coat. Here she is looking like a big girl with her saddle pad and surcingle on.
She really doesn't move around with her head down like this, I think she was looking for some food. As you can see, she has missed a few meals!
Well, that was a nice little trip to the barn in my brain, come on Saturday!
2 comments:
She's so cute! Sounds like she is a quick learner and takes things with ease. She's going to be gorgeous under saddle, so flashy! ;)
I can't wait for the weekends too...that is the only time I get to see my horse right now! Soon, as the daylight hours increase, I can get out to see him a couple weeknights, too!!
Thanks, I sure think she is a cutey ;) I can't wait for summer daylight hours. The temperature change won't hurt either!
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