Big storms came through Friday night. We watched our nice dry pasture turn into a lake. Luckily it’s the extra pasture that we don’t always have horses in. It was suprising how much and quickly the water came up.
Hanna left the barrels in the arena. We had bets going how far into Oklahoma we’d find the barrels. Surprisingly, they were all standing, still on the pattern when we went out to check everyone after the storm.
It was hot and soupy in the indoor! The humidity was through the roof. Goose and I worked on some things we work on in our home arena, but it was so fun having a fence! I could actually not steer her at all and let her be in total control of herself. We worked on managing destination addiction (the gate) for a bit, and she finally was using the full arena with no problem.
We also worked on riding with other horses (also a destination addiction issue… the other horse). It’s such a simple exercise. You give your horse complete freedom (loose rein, no steering) and let them go where they want to go. If they choose to go to another horse, that’s fine, just pick up a trot as you approach the other horse, don’t steer, let them control themselves. Goose trotted to the other end of the arena, away from Fiddler, I let her come back down to a walk. She walked for a while and headed back to Fiddler. Pick up a trot as we get to him. It didn’t take long for her to figure out Fiddler was not the resting spot. 🙂
At one point Hanna asked me to video a runthrough and headed toward us on Fiddler. Goose started to walk away. 😀
Goose and I headed outside to give them the arena to work it, and although it was hot outside, it was much cooler than in the arena.
We worked on the “destination addiction while on the trail” exercise, which can be found in the Warwick Schiller subscription. She was able to go all over the place. She found some good resting spots and was rewarded for those. I was very surprised by how brave she was and how far away from the trailer and Fiddler she was wanting to go.
I’m pretty excited because I think she really does want to be a trail horse. She wants to be out and about seeing the world, and not stuck in the arena. This is perfect, because it’s what I want to do as well!
I’m really excited about the progress we are making. She experienced traffic and was unbothered. She was willing and brave about going so far away from Fiddler and the arena. She was forward and ready to go new places without me asking.
Things are looking up!
I don’t think we’d be anywhere close to where we are at without the amazing wisdom of Warwick Schiller and his principles of training. It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of situation we get in to, there is a principle that will help me handle it.
Instead of learning specific actions to take (which may or may not be what we need in any given situation) we’ve got principles and that makes all the difference.
You can see all the principles of training in Warwick’s new book. The Principles of Training. 🙂
