Looking Back, Looking Forward

First a side note on the coming week: You may not be seeing a post from me next week. It is Spring Break in Greenville County and I am sure the barn will be over run with young people, making this kind of work sometimes awkward. In addition, there is a very high probability that my own horse, and Matilda's paddock mate, the beautiful and much beloved Bella Donna will be sold early in the week. This would make it an emotional week at the barn, not conducive to work. It may be a week for sitting on my sitting rock, staring at the sky and rubbing Matilda's chin. We'll see how things unfold.

With all this and the tremendous success with Wednesday's "L is for Leather" exercise, it seemed like a good time to pause and take stock of where we are.

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"Foundation Exercises" from Teach Your Horse Perfect Manners:

1) Happy to be touched all over with no resistance: Check! although she does have off days, but who doesn't?

2) Coming smoothly towards me off a long line of 10 ft in a straight line: Check! and then some. She comes to me from farther than 10 feet without a long line, but not necessarily in a straight line.

3) Backing up easily, including one step at a time: Triple Check!

4) Moving over sideways from either side, including over a pole: I haven't tried the over the pole thing in a while and I know we still have a tough time getting her whole body (mainly her back end) to shift sideways, but I think we can give ourselves a check here and move on.

5) Standing still for 1, 3 and 4 minutes: no comment, except that we are moving on. We'll keep this one in the back pocket for now.

6) L is for leather in either direction: Check! We'll try this one again to make sure it wasn't an accident, though.

Other stuff we do, but still need to work on:

Touching/Following a target stick. Check!
Picking up and flinging a ball (mostly at herself). Check!
Walking with me, unattached, in the paddock, including stopping and backing with me. Check!
Picking up feet. Just started.
Walking with me on the lead without pulling (She really is an easy lead, but working on being confident that she will not pull me is the key. Mostly it just requires practice.) mini-check.
Not pushing, biting or really touching me (unless I invite her too) mostly Check!
Desensitizing to the longe line and whip. Check!

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Not bad, not bad at all. We started on January 13, so this is a lot for 3 months. Actually I am kind of surprised at how much we have accomplished. It has felt so slow at times, but it should be slow since we are both beginners at this type of learning. That's a lot for slow learners.

Let's look at what's next too!

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"Additional Yielding Exercises" from Teach Your Horse Perfect Manners:

1) Head-Lowering Exercises: Lowers head with minimal pressure

2) Neck Flexing Exercise: Bending head from the poll (just behind the ears) and down the neck with little to no resistance

3) Following Pressure: Following pressure even if you don't know where it is coming from.

4) Disengaging Hindquarters: Walking around the front legs.

5)Moving the Forehand around the Hindquarters: Opposite of number 4.

6)Teaching a Horse to go in Front of You, or Walk Ahead of You.

** these are going to be interesting as some of them require contact or being attached, something I have tried to avoid (much of the time unsuccessfully) and have had lack of pressure and contact in teaching as a goal to achieve. Since all these exercises are designed to be done with person and horse attached, I will have to really think about what requires a line and what could be done without any kind of direction from pressure... with voice and body language only.

In addition, a lot of these are exercises in flexibility and suppleness that could be done every day as a sort of warm up, once learned.

What Else Might Happen?

Continuing to work on all the other stuff listed in our extracurricular activities, as well as walking in a circle around me. I guess you should know by now that anything can happen here. Anything that pops into my head or that I come across in my reading that sounds like fun can and probably will be added to the list.

Thanks to those of you that are reading this and following my adventures with Matilda. There's a lot more to be done and a lot more fun to be had here! I am looking forward to seeing where all this goes. Until next time....