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!