Saturday, December 1, 2012

1st December, 2012 Rose tinted spectacular

Well not really. Another calm ride out with Rose and Coco this morning. This time Rose had a change of rider with Julie on board. Both ponies went off the lead rein out for the first time and were happy and independent of each other. We put the lead rein back on as a precaution when we were closer to the traffic but otherwise my role is diminishing bit by bit.


Always have some red in the photo - and I love my new Musto ear-keeper-warmer.



This afternoon it was off to another starter pony, a New Forester. She was much sharper than I would expect her to be and I need to get behind her reason for that. I need to see if I can find ways to reduce her anxiety as well as addressing the behaviour that comes out of it. Once again it reminded me that I always like to long rein a potential starter so that I can assess what I've got and how reactive they are. This pony was fine about all the preparation exercises but quite worried about having reins on both sides of her at once. We ended the session on a really good note, with three perfect circuits of the paddock on her right rein. When I go back on  Tuesday we'll see whether this has done any good or whether we need to break the work down to even more incremental steps.