Lessons update

One of the things I wanted to learn in lessons was to canter a circle collected.  We can do that now.  Zoe and I need to work on being light on the front end at the canter.  In today's lesson the trainer said we were floating at the trot.  It felt really good.  Felt like I had alot of energy in my horse that was used in a collected manner, she was paying attention, working like I asked without constant nagging on my part. The canter was a different story.  She was just heavy on the front end.  So I learned some techniques to help her understand to get off her front end.  Wrapping my legs around her (she is a smaller horse and I'm a tall person), using my outside rein and sometimes asking with my inside leg to stay to the far outside of the circle helps.  I could get different speeds out of her at the canter.  And we finally got lighter on the front end.  Something for both of us to work on.

In the past we have also worked on cantering over poles.  We used 1/2 of the arena, set up poles at 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock and cantered over them.  Sometimes she needs alot of leg to get keep up the canter when we are approaching a pole.

More pole work has been to trot over poles collected.  Sometimes the poles are on the ground and sometimes they are raised up-no more than 6 inches.  We've gotten so that we can do 6 poles in a row.

Something else we have been working on is haunches in, haunches out and shoulders in, shoulders out.  She understands this pretty well.  We just need to build on it and eventually the trainer says we will be trotting these types of steps.  We usually do this at the side of the arena.  Lately he's been having me do it down the middle of the arena.  We will do a haunches in to the left for a few steps, straighten out for a few steps and then haunches in the the right for a few steps...continuing down the arena switching sides as we go along.  A precursor to flying lead changes-which I'd like to accomplish.  My other horses just do flying lead changes when we change directions in the arena-I've never had to teach a horse or myself how to get this done.  I guess it's my turn to do that on Zoe.    We also do the shoulders in and out down the middle of the arena.  

Half steps are something that will take a while to accomplish but we are starting on it.

A couple of weeks ago we did counter canters.  She was better on the left lead going to the right.  I was told that this will tell me how balanced she is.  Obviously one way is easier for her than the other.

A challenge for us is to pick up a collected canter from a walk with NO trot steps in-between and then to drop down to a walk from a canter with NO trot steps in-between.  She can do it but it takes some work.  The trainer said not to practice this one all the time, just once a week is enough.  So I probably won't be accomplishing this one quickly-it will take some time.  I notice that in the round pen she can do it.

Last week we did round pen work.  We learned how to do inside turns and outside turns.  Zoe usually does outside turns when she changes directions.  Inside turns was a new one for her and she finally got it.  The trainer did most of the work last week-showing us how to get the different turns.  Zoe made a mistake and was sassy with him.  That just made more work for her.  I'm pretty sure she left the round pen and was thinking "what just happened to me?"  I went on vacation for 3 days after that lesson so I didn't get back to practicing until this Monday.  Monday she remembered the lesson but was not cooperating at every turn.  Tuesday was better and Wednesday was good.  On Tuesday and Wednesday she did so good that I felt comfortable climbing up on her bareback and bridleless.  The only problem turn out to be the weeds in the round pen-she knew she could stop and eat them any time she wanted to-and she did.  I'd like to work on that some more-guess I'll have to pull the weeds.

Today we also did a collected canter down the middle of the arena, slowing to a trot, then changing leads, slowing to a trot and changing leads again, etc all the way down the arena.  Zoe was getting wired-alot more energy than I was used to.  Maybe she was saying "leave me alone and just let me canter!  Quit changing things up!"

So as you can see we have been busy with lessons.  We've been doing many different things over time. Someday I'll have to post some pictures of our work.

Hot walker

Yesterday I put Zoe on the hot walker for the first time.  My barn manager said I could use it anytime but I've never wanted to.  Since I didn't have time to go on the trail yesterday and was only going to do round pen work, I thought I could throw in some hot walker time too.  So in the morning was the hot walker and the afternoon the round pen.

My barn manager showed me how to get her going on it.  She suggested putting her on one of the shorter leads so she wouldn't play around so much.  Then I was to turn on the walker briefly, maybe for 1 second, to get her to feel which way she would be going and to get her used to the noise of the motor.  It does make a quiet noise.  Then turn it on and watch her to see what would happen.  The noise of the motor was noticed but wasn't regarded as scary.  At first she was surprised that she had to walk-something was leading her and it wasn't me.  She was on the walker with 2 other experienced "walkers"-and that was something the barn manager said would help.  Sometimes one of the other horses would stop just because and we have to yell at him to get going again.  Zoe picked up on that behavior really fast.  However she did learn that it doesn't do much good to stop, you just get in trouble.  Then she did really good.  The stopping behavior was greatly reduced and she spent about 20 minutes walking.  I'm not sure that she was thrilled about it as the pictures show but she did cooperate and it was a new learning experience.  I probably won't use it very much and I'm sure Zoe will be happy about that.  One of Zoe's horsey friends called it a hot dragger instead of a hot walker-I'm sure Zoe would concur.