With Lindy going back to work at Kingston Maurwood College and my client's daughter buying her uniform for Sparsholt, the autumn must be on it's way. Just the right time for two year old horses to start some gentle work aimed at building up their work ethic.
The subject of school came up with both of these horses as they can both get a bit nervous in there. The school which is away from the other horses is screened by tall hedges and trees at a little distance on two sides. On the other side of one of them are poly-tunnels and farm-hands, and the other side of the other one there are alpacas and the occasional disembodied voice. However, the school is on the flattest, best draining part of the land. The question is whether to move the school to somewhere less scary for the horses or to train the horses so that they are no longer scared in there. All of this before the owner commits herself to expensive permanent fencing around it.
If a horse's adrenalin is up then it is hard for him to learn anything. We decided to see how we could shape today's training to help Coco, the first horse, to stay as calm as possible. Using a square box made of poles as a 'safe place' we worked our way across the field, allowing him to face the hedge, until we were almost at the top hedge. Bit by bit we moved a calm horse from the bottom to the top without his adrenalin creeping up. The next step is to ask him to stand sideways on to the hedge. Where should be place the box?
Bella was in calm mode today anyway and so we were able to go through the preparation exercises for long reining and start her off long reining with dual controls and then solo. She did really well and we ended fairly shortly after this photograph was taken so that we could end on the best possible note.
