A long but sunny and satisfying day yesterday. Having fed and tidied up my own horses, it was off to catch the ferry to the Isle of Wight again.
We were picked up at Yarmouth and then off down to Arreton to work with Dillon. Dillon is booked in for the Mark Rashid clinic on the mainland in May and is just being brought back into work after four months off. Even so, he has made some good progress since my last visit last summer.
Here we're asking him to sidepass along a pole using a very light aid and lots of imagination! It helps if you start part way across the pole so that you only ask for three side steps to begin with and then build up from there.
Turn on the forehand. The poles around the 'stop box' help to contain any forward movement.
He's softening to the bit nicely when asked but probably needs to be asked more often.
For the second part of the session we swapped him into a Rocking S snaffle which is Mark Rashid's preferred bit and then worked on some trot transitions. It is plain to see that Dillon interprets the aid to transition upwards as a cue to canter. This probably stems from his previous owner who wanted him to be a showjumper.
In the end we resorted to me showing him a simple trot transition by walking and then going into a jog beside him. His head is still up but he was getting there.
A bit of loading practice before we turned out backs on him...
"So lovely to see you again and work with you very positive day and lots to work on." DWSecond call of the day was on the coast at Niton where fortunate rescue case Durante has finally pitched up on his world tour which started in Portugal and took in Wales en route.
This little horse has some growing upwards and outwards to do. Sadly there are a lot of Portugese horses ending up destined for meat but some have been rescued by a highly questionable rescue organisation that sends out horses that are in a worse state than when they arrived with them. Durante who is a Lusitano cross Arab was half starved when he arrived in the UK, hardly or badly handled, and still entire. Since then he has been gelded and fed and trained for riding.
Like most horses he enjoyed a good gallop about in the school and then a roll before we started work.
Durante is still in touch with his stallion hormones and likes to engage in mouthing and nipping people as well as barging into them and pulling them around. This is not naughty behaviour, it is simply uneducated, sometimes inadvertently reinforced, automatic, non-thinking, reflexive behaviour. However, for the same reasons it is also persistent.
The question is, is it mean to mean it when asking him not to invade space, barge or bite? To me the answer is no because he needs that level of clarity and his owner needs the behaviour to stop. The real question is how to achieve it without being violent or punishing him; it's no good hitting him for biting or smacking him for walking in to me. The use of clear and consistent body language worked well.
I also asked him not to overtake me when he was being led - even when there were children bouncing up and down on the trampoline next door. I want to be able to walk with him with no pressure in the lead rein.
Tired horse...
"Thanks very much for today, loads of good advice x" JM
When we got back to the farm we found Theoden loving up the builders who apparently have a stash of carrots. Still, all helps to keep Theoden orange.
