FYI - We are leaving Kelly Marks' book behind. It has served its purpose and we are taking all the things that we have learned and running with it! I'll talk more about that later in this post.
We went to the barn on Tuesday but only so that my 6 year old niece could have a lesson. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw Matilda in the upper ring with a saddle on! Loryn was working with Matilda, not just going over "over" (hee hee) and moving away from pressure, but teaching Matilda to move away from small, gentle taps of the whip with the saddle on. Loryn informed me that she was not at all distracted by the saddle. Kismet -
Loryn was reading my mind. I had written in my last post that I was thinking of putting the saddle on Matilda for the lunge work and there she was, with a saddle on her back!
So today Matilda worked with a saddle. Loryn briefly showed me what she had been doing and then we put Matilda on the longe line. (I had indicated my hopes for the day to Loryn and I think she was as anxious as I was to press on!)
There was another horse in the ring and we had a slow start. I asked her to walk and then whoa. She kept walking for a long time after I asked her to stop, but I clicked as soon as she stopped and then I had her. She gave me everything I asked for within moments of my asking.
Now that she is doing so well with her walk, trot and whoa transitions, I am trying to focus on and reward some specific aspect of her lunge work. Right now it is softness on the line. Matilda likes to use the longe line to help her balance, just like we might balance by pressing against a wall, I believe she presses to the end of the longe line as a way of trying to balance herself. This means that I have to use my body weight to hold her head in, in an attempt to keep her from that spiraling out of control business. So, my goal now is to only click if the longe line is soft (or relaxed) and she is maintaining the circle on her own. Right now I can only get a few steps before she presses to the outside but a few steps is better than no steps at all.
Now we get to the fun stuff:
As long as Matilda had a saddle on her back and there were two of us there, somebody had to get up on her, right?! This was what Loryn and I had talked about and why we were so eager to get through our basics. We had talked about just clicking for Matilda standing still while Loryn simply mounted and dismounted, yeah right.
Our barn uses a mounting block and it is very difficult to dismount on top of a mounting block so we had to ask her to move forward a little too, right?? right??
This was Loryn's first time on Matilda and Matilda's first time with a rider in 2+ years. I think we were both really excited. I had the lead for Matilda's halter and Loryn was on her back. I wish I had pictures but, well... I had the lead rope and I am super paranoid and not getting distracted for a photo op.
OK, I am going to digress from the narrative to explain our new ideas and direction now so that you understand what we were doing....
One of the things Kim and I have talked about (in a vague sort of way) is the possibility of Matilda becoming a therapy horse. As I thought about how to transition Matilda from longe work to under saddle work, it hit me. If Matilda is to be a truly phenomenal and unique therapy horse, she needs to be able to listen, understand and obey basic directions from the saddle- whether by voice, leg, hands or any combination of the three.
I mean, what if someone who had no leg strength wanted to ride? Wouldn't it be great if they could be confident in rein or vocal aids while building leg strength? Or someone who had poor motor skills - they could rely on the vocal aids while figuring out how to move and control their limbs independently. The possibilities are infinite if we can figure out how to make this work.
So, I asked Loryn (and I will be also) to brain storm how to proceed to teach Matilda to stop (whoa), walk, trot and turn left or right by voice, leg and/or rein aid. I am really excited about this new idea. We'll still be working on "regular" riding so that she will be a good horse for Loryn to ride in lessons and such but this will be an entirely new dimension for us to work towards. We need to come up with long term and short term goals to meet each week. So cool.
(You can tell how excited I am by the poor sentence structure:))
Back to the narrative:
Loryn was up on Matilda, I had the lead. Our goal? to see how Matilda listened and responded to the vocal commands (NOT trot but walk and whoa) with minimal leg aids.
The difficulty? being next to her with the lead in my hand and not telegraphing "walk on" and "whoa".
Loryn would ask Matilda to "walk on" with minimal pressure from her heels then to "whoa". She had nothing to pull back on to support the vocal command. I did my best to walk next to them only after Matilda started walking and to slow to a stop only after Matilda did. Every few starts and stops Loryn would dismount, walk Matilda back to the mounting block and re-mount. I would click and reward when she stood absolutely still for mounting and for stopping on command. (stop is always the most important command for a 1600 lb. horse)
It was all brilliant. She was absolutely calm and quiet with everything we threw at her. I really believe that we are starting a new chapter in this journey. Now I am thinking about how to teach Matilda the difference between left and right. I think it will all start with the vocal commands and we will be able to build the other aids from there. Using the heat as our ally and the clicker as our enforcer, we press on to see just how far we can go, how much she can learn. The sky is truly the limit.
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