An interesting end to a very busy week with two new horses to look at. Hero is a Czechoslovakian warmblood and 17.2 hh. He's got more air miles than me having also been to Ireland for a number of years where he show-jumped and hunted. These days he struggles to cope with exciting environments and so today we worked on groundwork exercises that might help him to realise that his owner is there for him and that he can afford to relax. It was suggested that loading might be one of those times where he would show the behaviour concerned but the groundwork and careful use of pressure and release (also enhanced by clickered food rewards) meant that there was no drama at all. We ended the session on this good note and next time will work on putting up the back bar and ramp.
Sally's owner had unfortunately come off during the week so I was asked to use my session to assess Sally's groundwork. She has recently taken against being lunged and therefore I thought we should look at how she responded to long reining instead. As you can see she thought this was much more like it and we ended her session doing figures of eight in trot.
"I really like the way that your worked with Sally today, She seemed really happy with everything, which makes me very happy! "MA
