Sunday Funday: Sledding With Horses!

Today I got the chance to scratch something off my horsey bucket list. The weather has been absolutely horrible thanks to the polar vortex of doom here in the US. However, today we decided to take advantage of the snow and play with something new. Yesterday, one of the girls at our barn decided it would be fun to hook her ponies up to a harness and have them pull a sled. After hearing about it and seeing the videos, of course I wanted to try it with my two horses!

With this plan in mind, I started my session with Rydel with a lot of friendly game. My ultimate goal was to get her to be able to drag something behind her confidently. I have to say, when I pulled the tarp out (after conveniently stashing it away all winter), Rydel's snorts and skepticism quickly had me thinking this was not going to be as easy as I had initially anticipated. After playing various versions of the friendly game in every zone for about a half hour, Rydel was still not very confident having the tarp or bag dragged behind her. Sensing the need to retreat, I decided to take a break and focus my attention elsewhere. After a short but sweet time at liberty, I decided to hop on Rydel bareback and watch as my fellow barn-mates took turns having their horses pull the sled. After some more friendly game following them around on horseback and of course, after I took a turn riding in the sled myself, I decided to bite the bullet and put the harness on Rydel. I wanted to see how she would react, and I was basically prepared for the worst.

At first, Evan stayed behind and put a little pressure on the rope while I lead Rydel around. Once we got the hang of that, I had Evan get in the sled and led Rydel again. I was AMAZED at how well she did. She really seemed to understand the purpose and even leaned into the harness to give herself more leverage. Before I knew it, we were trotting around and having a great time! We played with this with both Rydel and Lilah and they both did great! Even though we were having a lot of fun, we kept our playtime short, sweet, and successful, knowing that we would definitely be practicing with the sled again.

At the end of our playtime with the sled, Rydel let out a big yawn and had a big emotional release. I could not be more proud of the confidence she demonstrated today, and I am even more humbled that she so willingly accepted my leadership and attempted something scary that she had never done before. What a great way to end the weekend!

What is on your horsey bucket list?

Wet And Wild? No, Just Wet.

A couple days ago we gave "the girls" (as Evan calls them) a bath and much to my surprise they both did great! Getting used to water was something I had specifically gone to Parelli Professional, Jesse Peters for help. We practiced it extensively last summer but once cold weather started I hadn't done anything more to prepare my horse for bathing. Because of her previous abhorrence to water I was worried that our lack of practice would cause her first bath of the season to be less than ideal. However I was pleased to find a horse who barely cared about the water and was happy to stand and eat while I washed her! Amazing! My horse who normally would go RBE around water was disinterested and actually relaxed and willing to put her head down to eat!

My mind was totally blown. I guess that's what they mean by "make no assumptions". Here I was assuming that I would end up with a wild horse who didn't want to get wet, when I actually had a horse who wasn't wild at all....just wet!

It was Lilah's first bath ever! What a great foundation she's getting!!

Putting Principles to Purpose- Online

I know it's been a while, but such is the life of a college student about to enter finals. I wanted to post a quick update about what we've been working on lately, though. I've been really excited to get moving on our level 2 freestyle especially since I have been watching a ton of videos about it for inspiration. However, Rydel has been having issues with the mounting block and being relaxed as I get on and off and I decided that I have been ignoring it long enough.

Pat talks about putting principles to purpose and giving your horse a task or reason to be playing the games. At a smaller level, the games are used to center and relax your horse and build her confidence. There comes a point though, when you need to start getting more creative- and I believe this is the point many people start to see breakthroughs. Pat uses the example of working with horses from on top of his mare, Magic. At that point she understood that she had to work with Pat as a partner in order to teach the horse on the ground. It was no longer just playing the driving or the circling game, the games had a purpose!

With that in mind, I began revising the dreaded sideways toward the fence (or in my case, the mounting block) using our sideways game as a tool to move toward the block and position herself for mounting. I used my phases and as soon as she stepped toward the block I quit, if she tried to step away, I would make the wrong thing difficult. It took about five minutes for her to really start understanding what I wanted. When she stood still by the block I rewarded her for a long period of time, quit, and moved on to something else. After the next couple of days it didn't take long before she was quickly moving toward the block and standing there while I rubbed her back and neck and mimicked laying on her back. :)

It's not perfect, but eventually I would like to build up her confidence with just having me lay on her or just sit on her. I think friendly game is the key- If I can build her confidence here I think the rest of our riding issues will fall into place!