April 2020
April 19, 2020
My week in 10 incomplete sentences or less. Worked on collection. Trail rode my colts to new locations. Went to a branding (had a blast!) Took some rodeo queen photos. Got a new horse in training. It was a great week!
April 12, 2020
Quite a bit of this week was a recap of last week. Worked on collection and will continue to for a little while. Collection has a long teaching process. But I also focused on some more desensitizing with the three year olds. Especially with Jasper, he has a tendency to be a little on the reactive side..... But by the end of the week, and after a long trail ride on Friday he was beginning to calm down.
Tuesday the 7th was Dally's 4th birthday! And to celebrate we went on fun bareback trail rides all week! I am so happy with how she is progressing and I am so excited to see how far she goes. :)
April 5, 2020
Sunshine is slowly creeping in, summer is coming my friends!
This week everyone continued to work on collection. Indy and Jasper are beginning to get it figured out at the lope and Honey is getting it down at the trot.
This will be Spirit's last month in training with me and I am really going to miss her. If any mustang could make a great cutting horse, it would be her. She is so catty and travels so low, if she had a little bit of cow instinct in there and she would be fabulous!
After a few weeks of prep work Dally was introduced to flying lead changes this week. This is one maneuver that I have always struggled with. But on the third day of working with her I was able to feel her change each time! The video was taken on the third day. You may be wondering, "What's the point of the jump?" Well, to do a flying lead change a horse needs elevation. They need to get themselves "up" enough to make the change. By asking for it over a jump we can get that elevation easier and then it turns into a game for the horse. That way they learn that it can be fun to change leads and not always work. This also reduces them kicking out in the change.