On Darcie for the first time!

Only a little bit ... but it's a start.

Going back a bit ...

Ellie and I were desperate to see the horses, so after a big day of putting together kitchen cabinets, off we went.

We had to wait for Bernie to get back because my car is off the road for another day or two, in order to get cheaper third party rego.

So we went up in the Fiesta (again, for me) and drove around looking for Wart. We went everywhere in the big paddock and didn't see him! So we drove back towards the gate and as we came in view of the dam, there he was cantering towards us. He'd spotted us!

We beat him to the gate and got out of it, then gave him his food.

He's so cute the way he blisses out on his feed with half-shut eyes.

Ellie had brought her saddle (Barefoot Cheyenne original model) and bridle (Nurtural bitless) in order to ride Orion.

Our new lead ropes and Darcie's new halter had arrived from Lodge Ropes. The leads even have Darcie and Orion's names embossed in the leather popper at the end, no extra charge. :) Darcie's halter was made to her measurements - also no extra charge. :)

While Darcie was eating I groomed her, rubbed her legs and picked them out, did a bit of "slap and tap", and jumped up and down beside her, and did the same but closer so I was touching her while doing it - and stopped only when she lowered her head or put it into her feed bin.

Ellie tacked up Orion and off they went for a ride. She did a bit of jumping and plenty of walking, trotting and cantering.

I started with Darcie with "desensitise to rope" since we had a new rope, and then did some lateral flexing. Then we practised backing up along the laneway. She is getting calmer about it while still hustling. Also we are getting better at guiding her while backing. We did "tap the air", with air tapping being all she needed, "waggle wave" and she was going on quite a small waggle, and "marching", which she gets a little confused at and thinks sometimes I want her to do LFR and heads off sideways instead of backwards. Also she didn't hustle like she should and got a couple of taps under her chest. I will report though that she was raising her forehand a couple of times while backing up during "marching".

When we got up to the other end of the alley, she was a bit worried about some new electric tape that was up, so we spent some time doing "sending exercise" near and towards it. At first she was rushing through but after about ten minutes or so she walked through calmly. I was giving her some time between each "send" for thinking and for rubbing, and also letting her just look at things on the way through - so a stop and a sniff was fine.

Then we headed towards the arena and Ellie was coming up the other way with Orion. Darcie avoided a pile of branches and leaves from a big branch that had come down and was cut up, so we did some sending exercise next to that, too.

I should mention that she's moving her forehand over nicely to yield space to me now, and also we are doing "changing sides", varying between pointing to start her, and moving her by touching under her jaw, every time I want to change the side I'm working with during desensitising.

(Also I get her to yield her quarter when I want to come up beside her for grooming.)

Somewhere in there we were doing circle driving too. I do a bit of circle driving most times we lead places now. It just fits in.

There was a lady lungeing a very "Araby" Arabian in the arena as we headed down towards it. He looked very nice and striking with his high head and tail and Araby trot.

Darcie was a bit leery of a bit of shadecloth that had been thrown over some stuff so we did sending exercise near that, too. Then same again as we walked past the outside of the round yard, for some reason.

That seemed like a great place to do sending exercise, but Darcie started rushing, and also not yielding her quarters easily. I swatted her quarters to get them around better, but she was rushing even more.

I could have kept going with sending, like we'd done before, but instead we switched to LFR stage 2, asking for changes of direction with a roll-back over her hind end, to get her thinking more about me and less about what was around her. Have not done LFR 2 for a while. We are not perfect at it, but better than the last time we did it. There were some nice roll-back turns there. I was finding that moving towards her a few times as she turned, as it shows on the video, was helping her to roll back with her weight back, instead of moving in towards me.

By the time we'd done that, Darcie was quite sweaty and blowing (so was I! But not as much as her).

A perfect time to do desensitising. I started with "run up and rub" but soon turned it to "jump like a kangaroo towards her and rub". That went well, even when I banged into her on the last jump, or trod accidentally on a hoof. I did it from the front, and then gradually angled it around until I was coming from the side.

I need to start doing it from behind more, as she tenses a little when I suddenly come from behind or beside-behind. She's good from the side so that should go OK.

The Arabian was coming out of the arena as I was finishing up with that, and Darcie wanted to look, so we switched to lateral head flexing.

From there I was bouncing up and down beside her, and rubbing my body on her as I did it, and it was a natural progression to allow my weight to come up and over her back. Only for a half second at first, and then progressed to about five seconds. It was getting dark so just a little was fine. She handled it well - she was a little concerned but stayed still, and the more I did it, the less concerned she was.

I was using her mane to help with my jump, with the left hand, and hooking my right forearm around her wither to help with leverage. It was most likely that which caused the tension more than anything else as I'd not done that before. But she got used to it fast.

I then moved her over and started on the off side but was hopeless at jumping up on that side. I could do it once but I am much better on the near side - that's the side I jumped up on during all my childhood and teenagerhood. So didn't manage to get more than a hint of weight on her when jumping from the off side, but did do lots of floundery jumping and landing all down her side and a bit over her back.

I'm going to need a mounting block to get weight on her from the off side. So some mounting block training is coming up. :)

On the way back to the paddock we did some more circle driving, and also I started teaching her inside turns.

One thing I noticed was that after doing the LFR 2 she was much quicker to put her head down and just quietly have it rubbed. Sometimes she moves her head around - something that started after she got it injured that time.

Another thing I'm not sure about is what to do when she tries to mouth the stick when I'm rubbing her forehead with it. When she puts her nose up to mouth it, it's hard to keep rubbing on her forehead. What I'm doing is ignoring and continuing the rub, and then when she puts her head down, stopping with the stick and starting with my hands, or just leaving it for a little bit.

Anyway, exciting! I've been on my horse! Only the tiniest bit, but it's a start.

I was so excited that I rang Cin, my friend, to tell her - HAD to tell SOMEONE that would appreciate it! (I'd probably told Ellie as many times as I could without driving her nuts ... and she'd been there to see it.)

It was only a tiny thing but it's a step between doing ground work and ridden work. It's the transition.

getting the flow and having fun

I've been slack and didn't post a couple of days back. We've been renovating - that is my excuse, but it's not a very good one.

The day after the last post I went up again. This time I took Darcie for a walk. We backed up a way at first, doing "tap the air", then "waggle wave", then "marching". The backup is getting better - smoother. She has plenty of energy when she does it. Sometimes she gets confused and goes to start off in LFR rather than going backwards. More practice at learning what the different cues are more clearly will fix that.

Then practiced leading with her changing her pace to speed up and slow down and stop with me (trot, fast walk, slow walk [which she found the hardest to do, to slow those feet right down], halt), and also responding to my hand pointing ahead for her to speed up.

We did some sending exercise up and down a bit of a bank/cut away. She was quite full of beans and throwing some excited bucks in so we did LFR 1 up and down the bank, to give her a bit more of a workout.

Then some more backup and some more leading, and then "run up and rub" and "slap and tap" in a different environment to the one I'd been doing it in before. (Oh and had been doing rubbing with the stick in between the other stuff, and rubbing her head, and ears, and nose, and things.)

On the way back from that we did some changing direction/changing sides stuff that I'm not sure if it has a CA name but was a useful thing to do, where I just switch hands and direction and she shifts her front end around to follow without running over me, and that flowed into some circle driving and changes of direction in that. Then some more leading practice on the way back to the paddock.

It was all nice and flowing, and fun too, not so much a "training session" as "having fun" with plenty of good training stuff thrown in.

practicing backup and some other things

Ellie is away and so I went up by myself. I was driving the little Ford Fiesta and gave it a bit of a scare, driving it into the big paddock. Wart was happy to have a feed. He's getting a bit brumbyish - moved away at first when I was feeling his hocks. But got over it. He needs a trim.

Orion and Darcie ran up for their feed as usual. There is a chestnut that comes up too and tries to dart out the gate, so I have to keep an eye out for it.

They didn't go straight over to the feed, instead grabbing a bit of the short sweet grass outside the gate, so it was easier for me to assist them to make the right choices in where to go.

Darcie is getting pretty good at moving her quarters over for me when I want to come up beside her, but I would like her to be less tense when she does it. I think maybe a lesson of just repeating it over and over.

I was rubbing Darcie while she ate, after putting headstalls on them both and putting the lead ropes into the hitching rings.

Then I let Orion just stand there while I gave Darcie some practice at backing up. Where we do it is not ideal because in places it's not really wide enough and I need to keep her straight, but we get by. Better than not doing it.

So we did all four back up methods. Tap the air (etc.), wiggle wave, marching, and yield quarter then jiggle rope/clip. Rubbing her with hands and with stick in between each move.

I'm rubbing her all over her head, over and around her eyes, around and on her ears, on her nose, etc. She does like her rubs.

Also rubbing her with the stick all over including up to the ears and she's much better about it now.

After we'd done that I could see she was ready for more so we did Changing Eyes. She's still a bit quick but did go into a walk after a little while. Possibly we needed to do some more work before, some LFR or something like that. But it was OK coz I wanted to work on this, also I want her to know it's OK for her to just walk when she's NOT tired. Anyway I think that reviewing yielding quarters and forehand was useful as we were getting the movement I wanted more easily than before. Not perfect but then she's been getting trained only here and there, which is not ideal (but again, better than nothing).

She was starting to flex into the circle quite well although we are still working on bringing the forehand in. She was starting to stretch her neck downwards a time or two which I was quite pleased about, as it was showing greater relaxation, and it helps to lift her back and engage the quarters, especially if the forehand is in a bit and she's putting the inside hind under her body. We are getting a bit of that here and there.

Moving into yielding hindquarter got smoother as we kept going. Not ideal yet, but we were getting some nice consistent crossing of the inside hind across and in front of the outside hind. Not all the time but better than it was.

Then moving the forehand over was pretty good, although she came a bit close a time or two. I just tapped her on the front if she was too close, just softly, she didn't need any more.

I'm still working on handling stick and lead smoothly, with changing hands over while taking in a bit more lead for the hindquarter yield and passing stick into other hand, and so on, and not tripping over the lead or getting the dangly end too long and so on.

I've been doing a bit of desensitising her to the movements of me changing things over since she was thinking it meant to go faster.

After we'd done that and were getting it reasonably well, I did "slap and tap" with her. When I changed sides we did "changing sides" with the movement of putting my hand under her jaw and moving it across, then pushing her over with my hand movement. The first time wasn't too great so we did that a few times until it was going smoothly.

Then we did "run up and rub" and she really isn't too worried by that at all now. Even from a ninety degree angle, and hopping and jumping up to her. She's not totally unreactive - couple of times showed a little tension - but she's pretty darn good and was not moving at all.

Then Nola came up with her new(ish) horse, a tall TB that I found out today is by Danehill. Only he was too slow for racing. :) She said he's going well - he's a bit more "looky" than Darcie or Orion.

While we were having a chat, Orion got his lead rope hooked under one of the brackets of his feed bin and it ended up dangling on the lead rope, moving up and down when he moved his head. He backed up a little and had a good look but he didn't do any more than that. I went and rescued him. Thank heavens for calm horses.

Nola and I all let our horses go at the same time - 'twas handy to have someone there to do the gate, it's not a well behaved gate and swings open if it can, so you have to hold it while doing it up, and being a chain, it takes two hands to do it up. When holding two horses at the same time, you have to kind of put one foot on it to stop it swinging, use both hands to do it up while balancing there, and have the lead ropes kind of draped over your "up" leg. At least that's what works best for me. So it was handy to not have to do all of that.

As usual, after letting mine go, I went back to the car and collected a bucket with a little bit of feed and went back to them. They were waiting for it. Greedy Darcie stuck her head in and Orion could not get his in! I had to wiggle the bucket away from Darcie so he could have a go.

Nola commented on how much Darcie has grown, both upwards and outwards. She really is looking more mature now. She's actually got a bit taller than I had been expecting, I must measure her, as I think she may be a little over 15hh at this stage. Or I could be just used to Wart who is 14.2!