Saturday, August 1, 2009

Poncho and Freya

Yesterday was amazing! At the play day I played with Freya and Poncho.

Poncho was up first. I am not really sure what his Horsenality is. I am thinking maybe a mild LBE that goes RBI when he is learning. But I am not sure. He could be a totally different horse when someone else is playing with him.

He was super easy to catch. That was nice! Catching horses is not my strong point. My horses are so easy to catch. The first thing we worked on was keeping out of my space and disengaging the hind quarters. A couple times he tried walking away... probably used to a web halter. Well he quickly found out that he can't lean on rope halters :) Once we got disengaging the hind quarters and "stay OUT of my space" going really good we did some friendly with the carrot stick and string. He was really good with it on the left but he got kind of worried about it on the right. This is were he was really close to going introverted. He would take a couple steps away but then stop. So I would rub him with the carrot stick till be some how relaxed then I took it off. Pretty soon he was okay with it.

Then we did some porcupine on the hind quarter, chest and nose. Poncho is SO smart! He was moving on a phase 1/2 the second time I ask him!!! Then we did some driving from zone 3. But it ended up being more like zone 2 driving. He had a hard time going a head of me. But he got it figured out pretty quickly. When I let him go after we were done he stayed right beside me and then when I walked away he started following me!!! It was only for a couple steps but it was really cool!!!!

After I had played with Poncho I played with Freya. She is totally different then Poncho!!!! We did a little bit of friendly before I started. Then the other horses started running around on the other side of the fence and Freya went RBE. She was running around so I had to first match her energy so she would notice me then I put her on a "spot" and every time she left her 'spot" I would do what ever it took to put her back. She pretty quickly figured it out and started relaxing and paying more attention to me.

Freya was calmer but still ready to go right brain at the drop of a hat. So we did some figure 8's. At first she was trotting around and not paying much attention but then she calmed right down and started thinking about the figure 8. It was getting better but I was looking for her to stop running off when I asked her to go in between the tires. So we kept at it. We stopped when she was doing them almost perfect!!!!! We even got some really nice, left brain figure 8's at a trot!!!

So then we decided to play with jumping. I wasn't expecting Freya to jump so quickly but she did. At first we did some squeeze games in between me and the barrels. I noticed that Freya would go through the squeeze okay but as soon as she was through it she would run forward..... hmmmm I tucked that away as something to pay attention too. I was SO thankful for my power position. When we were watching the video footage that my mom taped I looked like a kite on the end of the lead rope!! But Freya is SO much better then what she was like when I first played with her!!! Once Freya was doing better with just the squeeze I sent her up to the barrels. She took one look at then and jumped it.... then ran off scarred. I was so surprised that she jumped the barrels!! So now the task was to get her more confident once she was over the jump.

I decided to ask her to jump again. She did the same thing. So I kept playing with it. She was slowly getting better. She would stop, turn and face me a lot sooner and not pull so much. Each time she got more and more confident jumping the barrels. You could just see the change. It was great!!! We ended when she jumped the barrels, stopped, turned and waited. It was perfect!!

Then she licked and chewed a lot. We also did some sideways with out a fence and Touch it. I was going to play with the tarp, Freya will not cross it. But I decided to end there because it was a really good note to end on.

I had lots of fun!!! It was great!

~K

2 comments:

  1. When you make this many wonderful notes, i cant compare to it. lol. you express everything so well. Just think the next time you come you will have a pony named Nigel to play with as well, or maybe i will who knows.

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  2. Well thank you for letting me play with your horses :) I always have a lot of fun!

    Oh cool!! I can hardly wait!! ;)

    ~K

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