So I got to play at Folkman's for 2.5 hours today. It went spectacular.
Played with Star first. Oh goodness she's a complicated horse. But rather than get stuck just thinking about her, which would so be something I would do, I'm going to attempt to stay in the moment. Star seems so complicated because as soon as you think she's LB and finally calmed down she goes RB again. But, that being said, I'm just going to ignore it for now and teach her like I normally would. So, I started off playing with the figure-8. Star is a RBE, so I thought this would help her focus. Well, I figured out she really understands the HQ disengagement, but her go cue is quite sticky. And she still doesn't really trust the CS. This made things a bit difficult, because I really can't start making demands of her until she believes the stick won't hurt her. Neither Lily nor Star will tolerate the Savvy String being thrown over them more than once.
But anyways, so we did the figure-8 and she looked pretty calm so I brought her in. Then, I thought of more patterns to do with her, and settled on the simplest, the game of Touch It. Star is a pro at this game. She understands it, she gets it, and it calms her down. She can be confident at this, after all, it's easy! So this was really nice to see, and it really helped her focus and relax. One thing I tried to be particular about was that she stand a little ways away from me while we moved. This would eventually lead to me in Z3 playing Z3 driving, and Star's going to need a lot of this to build confidence, so the sooner we start the better. After I was done playing with Star, she got to stand tied for a while to help her not be worried about being away from her buddies.
Then it was the lovely Lily's turn. I didn't really do much with her last time I played because my brain was going to mush by that point from playing with so many horses lol. Too much thinking! But it is quite obvious Lily is a much calmer horse than Star. Actually, it was funny, I realized Lily was doing one of the things Farrah talked about before, she was choosing to be RB. She'd go snort at things and go "I'm really nervous!" but it was all an act. We also started out with the figure-8 and got one nice half lap and quit. Then we went to Touch It, too, but it didn't help Lily near as much as Star because she didn't need the help. She wasn't as interested in the obstacles, but she did stand on the pedestal, so I think she's done that before. Then, I went to playing with our Circling Game. We had a 22 to work with, so Lily had lots of room, and I was being particular about the direction that I sent her in. Once she got the direction down, my goal was 2 laps of walk/trot. Her pattern was to stop about every half/quarter of a lap, and she probably did that at least 20 times before I got a full lap out of her. Very funny horse. I'm like "yeah, you're SOOO RB." :) She really is a sweetie though. Then I sent her the other direction and she did a whole lap, no questions asked. What a good pony!
So then I decided to do some mounting practice. I've no idea if she's ever been ridden bareback before, so I played it safe and did a lot of approach and retreat. I slid all over her and made sure she could tolerate me up there ok. She didn't mind. Once I corrected her for moving off on me, she was fine. I tried asking her to move forward to see what she'd think about that and she walked over to some grass to eat lol. She really just wanted to spin around though. She didn't know what to do really with a person up on her back. I was riding one rein and in a halter though, too, so I imagine that was kind of new. I think we're going to focus on following the rail as our pattern, I just have to get that good on the ground first. Because I'm really learning with these guys exactly how much ground skills relate to riding skills. They're essential with these guys. Great day though!
