Twosox: Ponying Twosox off of Prince.

March 15, 2011

 

I decided to give this a try just to see how it things had gotten better from the last time we tried this... a long time ago. I was really happy with how it all went, how well Prince responded to my body and how well Twosox did listening to what I asked! It was far from perfect but it was definitely much better than before.

Prince, Twosox and I started out with just doing basic walk-halt transitions and trying to get Twosox to lead off the feel of the halter with more lightness. Twosox was leading on it quite a bit. After that was going better we moved up into the trot. I wrapped the lead rope around the saddle horn so that it would be a more solid feel for Twosox and more quicker release when he came off the the pressure. That seemed to work really well and Twosox started walking and trotting beside Prince and I instead of lagging behind.

Just as this was going really well I noticed that Prince was starting to pin his ears at Twosox, which he wasn’t doing before at first I just thought that it could have been because he didn’t like Twosox being so close but then I just happened to look at Twosox as we were trotting a long the rail and he was biting at Prince! So I had to promptly attend to that and as soon as Twosox stopped trying to bite Prince, Prince stopped pinning his ears.

We did some more Follow the rail with walk, trot, halt, back up transitions and then we ended. To take the halter off I asked Twosox to put his head on Prince’s neck and then even after I took the halter off Twosox just left his head there for me to rub it. So we spent some time just hanging out together, all three of us, before Prince and I walked off, but to mu surprise Twosox followed us!! It was really cool!! We walked around the end of the riding ring and then stopped.

It really as a whole lot of fun and I want to continue advancing it more this spring and summer. Plus the better Twosox's and my Liberty gets, the better our Liberty while I ride Prince with get :) But never despise small beginnings! 

Naturally,
~Keri