A few weeks ago, I wasn't feeling as positive about Avalon's progress as I am today. Her head and emotions were sky high every day I visited. On this particular day, I began by using the temporary pond that sprang up in the pasture as a water obstacle. Ava was spooky and concerned, but she did walk through it both ways without running me over.
When I am expecting to do more high-energy work (cantering, jumping) I like to put boots on Ava. She has a habit of stumbling and falling. I don't think it is a coordination or neurological issue, because when she runs in the pasture she's fine. She just lets her mind wander to all the spooky surroundings instead of her feet.
Anyone know if these look good or not? I'm not a good judge of boot fit. The splint boots are size medium; the overreach boots are small. Feel free to tell me if I put them on wrong, the overreach boots have left and right on them, but the splint boots do not. I try my best
In the arena, she was gorgeous but distracted. I had hoped to bring her energy up, but it was already sky high.
We returned to the sit-on-fence-and-redirect-attention-until-she-calms-down exercise from May.
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| Not too spooky to try biting her boots. |
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| Head down but spooky still |
Afterward, I tied her and walked back to the arena to pick up my stuff. She stood perfectly even when I was out of sight.
your boots look fine to me. I had a trainer once explain to me that when Carmen was up she 'wasn't taking responsibility for her feet'. He took her and asked her to circle both ways around him and then asked her again to do the task at hand (walking over a bridge). That worked really well for her.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm going to have to try that. Her airhead nature makes trot poles obsolete, since she stumbles over them the first three or four times.
DeleteThere are a lot of ground exercises you can do to get them paying attention to you. My trainer would have me bend Leah’s neck around and immediately let the rope go slack, expecting her to hold the bend toward me. If she took her head back to look elsewhere, I immediately bent it back up to the withers, and instant release again. Eventually, she’s hold the bend by herself for 30 seconds or so, and I’d do the same on the other side. After that, we did an exercise where I’d send her out to the end of the lead, have her stand facing me, and I’d walk to her left or right and she was to see me with the corresponding eye and face up in a straight line as I moved around the circle, step by step. If she was distracted and did not move, I threw the end of the lead toward her hind really fast, to get her to square up again. There were a lot of little things we did to get her attention and in a focused mind.
ReplyDeleteI'll definitely add those exercises to my arsenol.
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