5th February, 2013 In Camera

In Camera is a legal phrase and actually means in private and refers to court proceedings from which the press were excluded. I didn't take any photographs today after yesterday's little incident but Charly brought his video camera along to our session with Jessica so hopefully we can make up for that later.

This morning I went off to see a young Thoroughbred that has never been raced or trained for racing. She has simply come from her breeder. Like a lot of young horses she had a strong into-pressure reaction when confined and on her own and was inclined to try and squash people against the walls. The best place to start work on this was in a much less confined space where she could see other horses so that we could get some of the simple rules and boundaries in place for when her adrenalin surges like this. She turned out to be an angel - very bright, very willing and very responsive to body language. Hopefully now that she sees her owner as a bit more of a leader she won't feel so alone out of the sight of others.

This afternoon's session with Jessica went very well too. After another short session of long reining, during which she was perfect, Charly leaned over her three times from a leg up and three times from the mounting block before getting on board three times. Three is the magic number so we left it at that for the today and will do more next time. Charly felt that she seems to be a little worried by the leather reins so we swapped them for two lead reins to see if it made a difference. She immediately settled down and I think we need to do some more analysis of and research into this.