Last week, I spent two days at Mike’s place, one to watch him ride and another one to help with all the horses.
I had a very good time. There are so few things I really enjoy doing and it seems one of the things I love the most is to be very busy grooming horses, mucking out stables and doing all sorts of things around the barn. I was born to be a stable hand it seems!
Oh and I got to ride another horse at Mike’s too. I rode his Mum’s 3 yo QH gelding called Flint. Such a cutie! He’s my favourite horse there.
It felt so good to ride a horse who’s not always fighting against everything I ask. It felt very easy and smooth. What a difference! I need to aim for that with Star!
I even got to do my first ever spin!
That made me a bit dizzy though…
On Saturday, I finally had my lesson with 1* Parelli Professional Vicky for on line (ground) and it was very good!
We started with a simple exercise. Back up Star to the end of the 12ft line and make sure she stays there, still. For Star, standing still is VERY difficult, she wants to be busy and walk all the time so I was backing her up every time she was moving a single step and she ended up standing there quietly eventually.
We kept on working on our back up and used a pole on the ground to make Star back up above the pole and stand behind it. Then we tried to make her put only one foot in front of the pole, etc. and she did well.
Then the exercise was to make her weave pattern in back up. It was supposed to be very difficult but my clever pony did it so well, I was impressed!
And then came out the dragon in Star. We tried to make her jump a small obstacle which went fine the first time but asking her the second time was one time too much and she had a huge tantrum, leaping in the air, rearing, bucking, bracing herself to escape, etc.
So Vicky took the rope and dealt with that tantrum for a while. Star was out of control like she always does with me when we play on the ground.
According to Vicky, this is pure LB tantrum and no RB fear at all and she’s having fun doing that too. She got into that pattern that she uses against me every time so I must break that pattern. Once this pattern is broken, Star and I will have much more fun and no more fighting.
I must adopt a power position to avoid her flying away by holding the rope strongly, to the point of almost “sitting” on it. Then, I must try and disengage her hindquarters and as soon as she does, I must walk towards her in a very dominant manner and make her back up (possibly using the c/stick if she doesn’t). The aim of this is to make sure she backs up, which is something I never tried before.
I did that several times and it worked every time but Star being Star, every time I was sending her on a circle again, she was having another tantrum…until she calmed down and had a positive attitude about all this. Phew…
So now, I have to make sure I do that every time she has a tantrum and one day she should have enough of this and stop fighting and become more obedient, so that we can go further in our program.
Vicky gave me some homework until our next lesson – Make Star stand still, far from my personal space and break that tantrum pattern.