I'm never in danger of being typecast but I did wonder if I was on the set of Playschool today. First pony of the day was called Denny but then we had Big Ted and later on we had Little Ted. Just need a Jemima and a Humble!
Denny has recently been started by his owner and she has done a great job with all of the preliminaries. Whilst he loves going riding with his friend, Ted, he struggles to go out alone and has a tendency to stop dead in the middle of the road. I started off by teaching him to short rein, something that could be useful as an alternative when taking him out and about. Then we headed out on the road ourselves.
For the first section on the main road I kept ahead in order to give him someone to follow. Luckily he is completely traffic proof nevertheless the middle of the road is not a good place to start being nappy.
On a much quieter side lane we started work on asking him to go forward on his own, using the reins to move his front feet whenever he got stuck. It often helps to think of the arms and reins as directing the front feet and the legs directing the back.
Back at the farm I went through a groundwork session with handsome cob, Ted, and his loaner, Lucy. Whilst he is a dream under saddle he is inclined to take control on the ground.
A quick lunch stop at the fire station to get the car washed at their Charity Day. How rude that someone said "Make sure you wash under the wheel arches, there's a field under there!"
I don't think that Jim was keen to wash all their fiddly bits - let's hope they just stopped for cake.
One year old Shetland, Ted, was originally sold through Beaulieu Road Sales yard to a family that didn't know how to handle him. Luckily he found his way to Louise and her daughter Emily who set about re-training him using No Fear, No Force. He's now a pretty friendly chap although he is inclined to nip especially when having his feet handled.
Some of that is due to the fact that he is still entire and, as you can see from the pictures below, accustomed to a lot of roughhousing with his friends. He just doesn't know (yet) that he can't treat people in the same way. Whilst gelding him will solve some of this testosterone driven behaviour, some focussed training will help too.
"Thankyou so much for today we really enjoyed it, I think with your instructions we will be able to slowly carry on with his training, I will keep in touch and maybe see you again when we need to move on to the next step !!" LN
"First training session with Ted after our time with Sarah Weston Logical Horsemanship yesterday, all went well, what a little star we have !!!" LN
