This is a photo of Darcie a few months ago when she was getting some despook training - she is becoming accustomed to a flag as you can see. (You can click on these photos to see them bigger.)
I have done training with Darcie before, but the difference is that THIS time, there is a clear goal of having her under saddle over summer.
Previous training has been a bit here and a bit there, and she's been in the big spelling paddock.
Today I swapped Darcie and Wart. Wart (19yo Arabian gelding whom I've had since he was a yearling) went into the big paddock. Darcie, after training, went into a closer paddock, with Orion (19yo Paint gelding with a TB mother, bred by me) and some other horses.
These are Wart and Orion on the same despooking day. Wart is being ridden by my daughter and Orion by her friend. I was the ground person. Orion is now my daughter's horse, but on this day she was riding mine. Her friend is not as good a rider and Orion is a wonderful horse for all kinds of riders. Wart, on the other hand, prefers to have someone that knows how to ride on him.
I took Wart for a walk through the 150 acre paddock looking for the herd, so I could release him with other horses so he could settle. Well he said hello but then he took off back to the gate. He's not happy about the change. He doesn't like change much. But he'll cope. In the meantime he's hanging out by the gate wanting to be taken out and back to his PROPER paddock.
Darcie I led out of the 150 acre paddock and took into the smaller training arena/pen with the five foot high sides.
She's been a bit feral so we just went over the stuff she knows.
I've been working through the Clinton Anderson training progression with her. I like it because it's step by step, very detailed, and it's sensible and practical. It doesn't have any weird spiritual stuff, or energy projecting by me (I would not know how to "project energy") or things like that. And as he's Australian, it's very much along the lines of what I already know, with some US variations.
I used to be a ride anything person when younger but now I break more easily so I like the idea of doing something that's very thorough. And there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Here's a training progression already worked out, and thoroughly tested. I can modify as needed. I imagine that I will add some more positive reinforcement to it. It is traditional horse training in a lot of ways in that it contains a lot of negative reinforcement. But there are clear ways in which one can add positive reinforcement.
ANYWAY.
What I'm about to describe has some CA terminology but since this is primarily a private blog that's OK.
So we revised round pen work. We'd done it in the smaller one before. She knows it pretty well but being a smaller area she doesn't get to move out as much as I would like. It transferred really well into the bigger area with squarer corners. Since she knew what was expected she didn't find the square corners or bigger area confusing.
She was doing her inside turns quite well and hooked on really well at the end.
Then we reviewed some desensitising. First with throwing the lead rope all over her including around her legs (but not actually ON her head), then the stick and string. Also slapping the string on the ground next to her, and also waving it around her head, and we also introduced the helicopter string exercise, spinning it over her, which she'd not done before. She was really good with all of this. Having been just worked previously I'm sure helped, as she was ready to just stand and have a rest, although she was a long way from exhausted! We've done a fair bit of this stuff before and she's pretty good with it anyway.
So then we reviewed yielding the hindquarters, and did some more desensitising. Actually we did desensitising between all the active (sensitising) exercises, so take that as a given.
Then we did all the four ways of backing up. Tap the air, waggle wave, marching, and yielding hindquarters into clip jiggling. These are probably not quite the right names but for anyone familiar with this, they will know what I'm referring to. Not perfect at those yet, and the fourth one was only introduced today, but she's picking it up pretty nicely.
After that we reviewed yielding the forequarters. To the left was pretty good but to the right was not so easy, she tended to back up and also go forwards a bit. At the end of that section she was doing some nice circling with her forehand in both directions.
The next thing was "lungeing for respect stage 1". We've only done that once before but she remembered it pretty well. She was going well, beginning to pick the direction and start with energy. We need to get better at yielding the hindquarters to a halt.
Then we did some more desensitising (along with all the rest of the desensitising that I didn't mention as I went) and I decided we were done. It had been a good session. We need to get the LFR-1 going better before we can start the sending exercise, as she needs to understand yielding the hindquarters in it better.
We have done yielding head and neck quite a lot previously, and if I'd remembered to do it we would have, but I forgot.
I took her out of the yard and hooked her up to the tie ring. I wanted to trim her feet, even just a rough job with the nippers, as they were a little long. However she wasn't leaving her front foot between my knees so I could clip the hoof. She's pretty good with her legs (now, after some training) but she was pulling the feet away from me when I had them in between my knees. Before when trimming her, I'd had someone to hold her which provided extra control, but this time I was on my own.
So I decided that since she's going to be hobble trained anyway, now was as good a time as any to start with the single leg strap. As I've never done hobble training before I had bought the CA DVD on it and it's a nice clear and safe progression. Admittedly I'd not looked at it for a while but I had a pretty good idea of what was in it. I used a stirrup leather as a leg strap, put on as per John O'Leary (horseproblems Australia) which worked well, but doing the CA training session, of putting it on, moving her around (actually we ended up doing a spot of LFR with it as she understood that well and we were both safe doing it) and then waiting for her to basically submit and relax and drop her head, and letting her just be there with it for a few minutes. Once she did that on the first leg I took it off, gave her a break and walked her around, then did the same thing on the other leg.
Then I took her out and put her foot between my leg to trim again, and she held her foot there so nice and light, it was magic. I thought I'd try her back legs too and although they'd had nothing more that day than the lead rope and the string looped around them in the desensitising sessions, they were good too. I have used a rope all up and down them, and pulled them and held them different ways with the rope, as well as the normal leg picking up stuff, and trimming holding stuff. At some point I will tie each one up with a proper restraint just so that it's been done.
Walking her up to her new paddock I saw a horse that a while back had degloved one of its back legs. It's only just gone to no bandage after months of bandaging, and it's not pretty. It reminded me that training leg restraints can help to protect from that kind of injury.
Well Darcie settled into her new paddock pretty quickly. Wart will take longer but he'll be OK and it will be good for him. He's a horse who likes the familiar, so if that big paddock becomes a home for him, it will make him more confident about being ridden in there - it's a good place for doing some "trail riding".
Day one done. A good start.
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