Into the Wide, Wide World
amywink February 27th, 2012
Blessing has moved beyond the round pen! Out into the wide, wide world she went this weekend, across the Scary-Sounding Gravel, past the Tractor of Death and down into the Big Arena to show me her stuff. Before Malen took her out, she showed me how Blessing could even canter with the bouncing tire behind her and I have to say it looked as if Blessing herself was showing off a bit too, proud of her new skills.
After 90+ days of training, she’s filling out quite nicely and muscling up in all the correct places. Her neck has finally caught up with the rest of her and she looks like a grown up horse. And quite the beauty as well.
She’s also learning the importance of ignoring dogs, since that will be a required skill at Taipan Station.
It was, of course, very difficult to take a photo in the arena, given the lighting conditions, but Blessing did very very well as Malen ground drove her through her paces. I got this one photo, which I like very much.
I was very proud of her and I think she is as well.
After the great day Saturday (which also included a wonderful riding lesson), with the weather improving, I hooked Will up on Sunday for a nice drive, hoping to get back to a good schedule of riding and driving on weekends.
Little did I know that there were Dragons Coming Down The Road. Oh, sure, they looked like Ordinary Horses, but they were Clearly Dragons and Will decided that Immediate Retreat was necessary. . . By Any Means Necessary. Lisa offloaded rather swiftly and Will was off in what can only be described Canter-Leaping. It wasn’t pretty and not at all appropriate for a trained driving horse. I never lost his head, nor my own, and we managed to make somewhat ordered retreat and get settled enough to stand and wait for Lisa to return from where she’d dismounted the carriage. Once we got back to the barn, she got off and I took Will into the pasture for some remedial work, which he protested with an almost buck. Whether he was still hyped up from the dragons, or sore from the sudden work, or unhappy by getting back to work after a month off, it’s not appropriate. Simply not appropriate. It is also something I haven’t seen since his greenest days so I have to reassess what happened and consider our restart. We unhooked and went back to the lunge line and we will be doing more lunge work and perhaps some long lining and ground driving before we get back to work again.
While it certainly must be a challenge to figure out where all four legs must go at the same time, she is figuring stuff out with only a little display of ire.
