Mo (Moose?) was SO FANTASTIC yesterday. We were in the indoor because it was raining, and she had what I think was her first experience with other horses being worked in the ring. Granted they were only walking out, but everyone was talking very loud and the horses were going in all different directions. She remained attentive and focused on me, moving off my leg when asked, and was more concerned about the birds than anything.
We didn't really start to work until everyone else had left, and did walk and trot serpentines as is usual. She is really getting better at rounding and being on the bit instead of throwing her head up to avoid it. She's also calmed down with the bit chomping as well.
Canter was fabulous. I did two departures each direction and half a lap of the indoor. Her brakes at the canter are not so good: canter, running trot, normal trot, then walk. It takes a while for her to stop but at least she does stop! It's something for us to work for. I got Dude from a gag snaffle and 3-ring elevator to his current loosering french link, so I think I am capable of teaching her to have a soft, sensitive mouth.
Her kickouts are practically nonexistent at the canter departure, and she no longer swaps off her lead by the gate. She also no longer drags me to the gate and bulges when we pass it. I am really happy with how she's progressing.
The only snag of the day came when I decided I would braid over the bottom of her feral-pony mane. Mo/Moose was not too sure about this, and I let her stand a little too far back on the cross ties. She took another step back, hit the end of the crossties, and when I reached up to help her forward, she panicked. Thankfully she didn't break them and I was able to coax her forward by just holding my hand at about chest level in front of her.
Karen found treats she likes! Carrot cake flavor "Luck & Love". Guess she only likes crunchy cookies.
Her feet still look great barefoot. Dude, on the other hand, pulled his LF shoe. Dumbo.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Learning Curve Is Not Exponential, Part I
I say "Part I" because I am absolutely positive this is not the last time Mo will remind me of this fact.
After our great lesson last Thursday, Mo had the weekend off while I went home. I got out to the barn for the first time on Tuesday, and there was a horse show going on. This is her second horse show, and I planned to just pony her around a little bit, stand and watch some rings, but after going to move her saddle forward by the mounting block, she made it abundantly clear that there would be no riding today. Instead we walked around and practiced standing, not spinning circles to see everything that's going on.
She did get more acclimated to the sound of hard rubs while the small hunters clunked around, a sound which had at first terrified her. Fortunately, most of her spooking is stomping her front feet in preparation for liftoff. Maybe it's a scare tactic.
Today, she was a real pain at the mounting block. She pulls up and parks herself by it like a champ, but as soon as I took one step onto the block and her hind end went off in its own direction. After multiple adjustments and a few choice words, we were on our way. Sometimes it just takes persistence, I guess.
She chomps on the bit constantly. I've been told this is fairly normal, though, and won't worry about it (yet!). She's going in a plain D, so no rubber for her to ingest or anything fun like that.
As far as ingesting goes, she doesn't like peppermints, only crunchy cookies. Is it a baby thing?
We worked today mostly on consistency of pace at the trot and bends at the walk, as well as serpentines to encourage her to move off the inside leg. The canter was a small argument to the right, a smaller argument to the left, and we successfully picked up both leads and executed a wiggly lap. Progress!
I have to keep reminding myself that this is going to progress very slowly, and to be patient. As much as I might act like I'm annoyed, though, I really am enjoying the experience. I'm sure Dude's happy, too: it makes me appreciate him 150% more than before.
After our great lesson last Thursday, Mo had the weekend off while I went home. I got out to the barn for the first time on Tuesday, and there was a horse show going on. This is her second horse show, and I planned to just pony her around a little bit, stand and watch some rings, but after going to move her saddle forward by the mounting block, she made it abundantly clear that there would be no riding today. Instead we walked around and practiced standing, not spinning circles to see everything that's going on.
She did get more acclimated to the sound of hard rubs while the small hunters clunked around, a sound which had at first terrified her. Fortunately, most of her spooking is stomping her front feet in preparation for liftoff. Maybe it's a scare tactic.
Today, she was a real pain at the mounting block. She pulls up and parks herself by it like a champ, but as soon as I took one step onto the block and her hind end went off in its own direction. After multiple adjustments and a few choice words, we were on our way. Sometimes it just takes persistence, I guess.
She chomps on the bit constantly. I've been told this is fairly normal, though, and won't worry about it (yet!). She's going in a plain D, so no rubber for her to ingest or anything fun like that.
As far as ingesting goes, she doesn't like peppermints, only crunchy cookies. Is it a baby thing?
We worked today mostly on consistency of pace at the trot and bends at the walk, as well as serpentines to encourage her to move off the inside leg. The canter was a small argument to the right, a smaller argument to the left, and we successfully picked up both leads and executed a wiggly lap. Progress!
I have to keep reminding myself that this is going to progress very slowly, and to be patient. As much as I might act like I'm annoyed, though, I really am enjoying the experience. I'm sure Dude's happy, too: it makes me appreciate him 150% more than before.
Monday, July 14, 2008
One Canter, Please, Either Lead
So I rode Mo a few times on my own, just walking and trotting, although that was mostly because cantering turned into an ugly running trot til the cows came home. So far, Mo's idea of being ridden is this: I will think about going when you ask me to go, will always stop when you ask me to stop, and will sometimes stop whenever I please. Basically, her default gear is not yet "forward," it's "wtf-ever i want thx."
She's still pleasant to be around, so that more than makes up for it. I love her mind. When left on crossties, at first she would walk forward, still thinking she was supposed to follow me. When she hit the end of the ties, though, there was no freakout. She just stopped, looked at me, was mildly puzzled, and took a step back and relaxed. By her third day, she realized maybe she should just stand where she's put, and then she won't have to deal with the crossties tugging on her face. Genius!
Another shining example would be the first endeavor of pulling her mane. She was not terribly pleased at first. Teasing the hair up would go fine, but as soon as I wrapped it around the comb and went to pull, she would walk forward or backward. This is basically par for the course with inexperienced horses, and the most important things were that the mane pulling not stop simply because she moved away, and that she got repositioned where I wanted her after that chunk of hair was pulled out. After five or six pulls, she got the idea, and decided to stand and take it like a mare.
Thursday was our first official lesson, and it was only about twenty minutes of real work. Jess had us trotting serpentines, figure eights, and circles, always changing it up and teaching her to move off the inside leg when changing direction. Keeping her forward through all the turns is the most challenging part, especially by the gate, but she's getting better. After some trot work, we took a break and talked about how wonderful she is.
Cantering has really been a challenge for me to get consistently. I can usually get a lap or two on one lead, but the other lead (right or left, doesn't matter) then becomes nearly impossible. What I would do is get a good forward trot up a long side, sit in the counter and ask for her to step off into the canter. This would result in one of three things: either she would canter (yay!), kick to the outside and continue to run-trot, or slow down in response to the increasing pressure from my outside leg.
After Jess watched this not-fun game once or twice, she suggested magic advice. Instead of letting her continue to run, unbalanced, onto her forehand after a failed canter departure, what I should do is pick up Mo's front end, bring her back to the walk, and ask again. This encourages her to make a balanced departure, and teaches her that the running trot is not at all what I was asking for. (A few loving taps of the Magic Blue Stick were added as well.) For that lesson, I was happy with cantering on each lead. WOW does she have a big stride! She got a few days off after that breakthrough.
So the next things we'll need to work on are:
She's still pleasant to be around, so that more than makes up for it. I love her mind. When left on crossties, at first she would walk forward, still thinking she was supposed to follow me. When she hit the end of the ties, though, there was no freakout. She just stopped, looked at me, was mildly puzzled, and took a step back and relaxed. By her third day, she realized maybe she should just stand where she's put, and then she won't have to deal with the crossties tugging on her face. Genius!
Another shining example would be the first endeavor of pulling her mane. She was not terribly pleased at first. Teasing the hair up would go fine, but as soon as I wrapped it around the comb and went to pull, she would walk forward or backward. This is basically par for the course with inexperienced horses, and the most important things were that the mane pulling not stop simply because she moved away, and that she got repositioned where I wanted her after that chunk of hair was pulled out. After five or six pulls, she got the idea, and decided to stand and take it like a mare.
Thursday was our first official lesson, and it was only about twenty minutes of real work. Jess had us trotting serpentines, figure eights, and circles, always changing it up and teaching her to move off the inside leg when changing direction. Keeping her forward through all the turns is the most challenging part, especially by the gate, but she's getting better. After some trot work, we took a break and talked about how wonderful she is.
Cantering has really been a challenge for me to get consistently. I can usually get a lap or two on one lead, but the other lead (right or left, doesn't matter) then becomes nearly impossible. What I would do is get a good forward trot up a long side, sit in the counter and ask for her to step off into the canter. This would result in one of three things: either she would canter (yay!), kick to the outside and continue to run-trot, or slow down in response to the increasing pressure from my outside leg.
After Jess watched this not-fun game once or twice, she suggested magic advice. Instead of letting her continue to run, unbalanced, onto her forehand after a failed canter departure, what I should do is pick up Mo's front end, bring her back to the walk, and ask again. This encourages her to make a balanced departure, and teaches her that the running trot is not at all what I was asking for. (A few loving taps of the Magic Blue Stick were added as well.) For that lesson, I was happy with cantering on each lead. WOW does she have a big stride! She got a few days off after that breakthrough.
So the next things we'll need to work on are:
- No kickouts at the canter departure,
- flexing and softening at the trot,
- learning that the hind and front end can, in fact, move independently of one another, and should do so when asked,
- canter departures with increasing responsiveness and decreasing MBS (Magic Blue Stick) use,
- and, probably most importantly, defaulting to "forward" instead of "o im done lets stop now."
Sunday, July 6, 2008
The Baseline
Cosmopolitan V is a 2005 bay American Warmblood filly by Crescendo V out of a TB mare, Olive Me xx. She has a big fat head, a small crescent star, a right hind sock with ermine spots, and plenty of personality. She has a big, kind eye, and no idea what's going on.
My mom and I went to look at her (and some other beautiful horses) on the advice of my vet, and fell in love with this eye-catching, excellently put together filly about two weeks ago. We watched her go, and she has dynamite movement. The next weekend, I rode her. We got along great, so we called up a vet and got her examined. After everything checked out, we mailed a check and shipped Cosmopolitan V to her new home at Briarwood Farm in Readington, NJ.
I go to school at Drew University in Madison, NJ and keep my other horse at Briarwood as well. He's an 11-year-old chestnut OTTB (off the track Thoroughbred) named Dude. We do the level 3 jumpers, and he has made it fairly clear that he is not comfortable jumping much higher, which is the cause of buying Cos"Mo"politan.
The first comment I got about her was from the shipper. When he called to tell me he was on the way, he said "Where did you find this horse? She's so sane for a 3-year-old, and beautiful! Looked at the trailer for a minute and then jumped right in. Hasn't made a sound the whole way."
She stepped off the trailer the same way: relaxed (all things considered), alert, and more or less calm. I can't ask much more of a three-year-old that just traveled two hundred+ miles, the longest trailer haul of her life. I brushed her off, bonded, and tucked her into her new stall.
From BWF I planned to go home for the 4th of July weekend. Half an hour into the four hour drive, I got a call from one of the instructors at Briarwood named Jess.
"So I'm staring at your horse because she just got her foot stuck in the window."
Great.
"Don't worry, she's fine, just a little scraped up. She doesn't want to put weight on it but I'm going to walk her around." Turns out she was sleeping, and when she tried to get up she decided it would be a good idea to climb up the wall. She put her foot through the window grate and kicked it out in her adventure of righting herself. Fortunately she is still barefoot, or else the damage probably would have been much worse.
I was gone for the weekend, but Jess called me the next day to say Mo was sound and the leg hadn't even swelled.
My dad and I drove back Saturday evening before a horseshow Sunday to ride both Dude and Mo. This was the first time Mo had been out in a few days, but she was pretty chilled out about it. We walked and trotted in one of the show rings with all the fancy jumps set up, stared at stuff, snorted at other stuff, and scooted around some more stuff. For her third day on the farm, she took everything remarkably well.
When it came to the canter, she really wanted no part of it and would much rather curl up into a ball in a series of rolling play-bucks. Persistence got her to pick up a nice canter for half the ring, and I called it quits with that.
Next day was the show. Dude was magnificent and was first and second in his level 3 classes. Mo wasn't too sure what was going on with the whole show thing, but she did her best to put on her big girl pants and roamed around like a champ. We watched some big eq and decided that when another horse smacks a rail it is very frightening. We also wandered around one of the schooling rings and realized that tents are evil and the jump crew is secretly a pack of wolves.
I didn't ask her for much, just straight, forward walking and a few straight lines of trot. She dropped down into a nice frame for some of it, but mostly she was a giraffe checking out the scenery.
Trying to get her into the wash stall was tough. She grew roots and decided she was perfectly happy in the aisle, thanks, couldn't I untack her there? No, I told her, there's too much going on in the aisle and you're going to freak when some little kid pokes your butt. We discussed this for quite some time, but whenever I would move to pull her off balance for a step forward, she countered with a step backwards.
Ok. Fine. I stood in the wash stall, and she stood outside of the wash stall. I was thinking about how to coax her to come with me and turn around -- not even get wet! just stand! -- and held my hand out to her. She looked interested, but made no move. I asked her to: "Cmon, Mo, you've gotta get in here."
She looked at me, looked at my hand, and took a step into the wash stall, no pulling, no walking, no bullying. A little surprised, I took a step back. She followed. From there out it was smooth sailing: we walked in, turned around, and stood for about thirty seconds before I gave her lots of praised and a cookie and pulled off her tack.
Mo has good muscling, but a little too much under her neck for my liking. She's a bit butt-high at the moment, probably 15.3 at the withers and 16.0 at the hip, and has a big ol' head to grow into. She's beautiful, though, and very sweet. She loves to drag her nose in the dirt to make snot-mud and then share it with me.
Hunter? Jumper? Who knows? She's got the movement for a hunter, but I'd love a jumper. We'll see what direction she wants to take.
She'll get tomorrow off, and Tuesday there'll be another update. Maybe with pictures! I know my dad took some.
My mom and I went to look at her (and some other beautiful horses) on the advice of my vet, and fell in love with this eye-catching, excellently put together filly about two weeks ago. We watched her go, and she has dynamite movement. The next weekend, I rode her. We got along great, so we called up a vet and got her examined. After everything checked out, we mailed a check and shipped Cosmopolitan V to her new home at Briarwood Farm in Readington, NJ.
I go to school at Drew University in Madison, NJ and keep my other horse at Briarwood as well. He's an 11-year-old chestnut OTTB (off the track Thoroughbred) named Dude. We do the level 3 jumpers, and he has made it fairly clear that he is not comfortable jumping much higher, which is the cause of buying Cos"Mo"politan.
The first comment I got about her was from the shipper. When he called to tell me he was on the way, he said "Where did you find this horse? She's so sane for a 3-year-old, and beautiful! Looked at the trailer for a minute and then jumped right in. Hasn't made a sound the whole way."
She stepped off the trailer the same way: relaxed (all things considered), alert, and more or less calm. I can't ask much more of a three-year-old that just traveled two hundred+ miles, the longest trailer haul of her life. I brushed her off, bonded, and tucked her into her new stall.
From BWF I planned to go home for the 4th of July weekend. Half an hour into the four hour drive, I got a call from one of the instructors at Briarwood named Jess.
"So I'm staring at your horse because she just got her foot stuck in the window."
Great.
"Don't worry, she's fine, just a little scraped up. She doesn't want to put weight on it but I'm going to walk her around." Turns out she was sleeping, and when she tried to get up she decided it would be a good idea to climb up the wall. She put her foot through the window grate and kicked it out in her adventure of righting herself. Fortunately she is still barefoot, or else the damage probably would have been much worse.
I was gone for the weekend, but Jess called me the next day to say Mo was sound and the leg hadn't even swelled.
My dad and I drove back Saturday evening before a horseshow Sunday to ride both Dude and Mo. This was the first time Mo had been out in a few days, but she was pretty chilled out about it. We walked and trotted in one of the show rings with all the fancy jumps set up, stared at stuff, snorted at other stuff, and scooted around some more stuff. For her third day on the farm, she took everything remarkably well.
When it came to the canter, she really wanted no part of it and would much rather curl up into a ball in a series of rolling play-bucks. Persistence got her to pick up a nice canter for half the ring, and I called it quits with that.
Next day was the show. Dude was magnificent and was first and second in his level 3 classes. Mo wasn't too sure what was going on with the whole show thing, but she did her best to put on her big girl pants and roamed around like a champ. We watched some big eq and decided that when another horse smacks a rail it is very frightening. We also wandered around one of the schooling rings and realized that tents are evil and the jump crew is secretly a pack of wolves.
I didn't ask her for much, just straight, forward walking and a few straight lines of trot. She dropped down into a nice frame for some of it, but mostly she was a giraffe checking out the scenery.
Trying to get her into the wash stall was tough. She grew roots and decided she was perfectly happy in the aisle, thanks, couldn't I untack her there? No, I told her, there's too much going on in the aisle and you're going to freak when some little kid pokes your butt. We discussed this for quite some time, but whenever I would move to pull her off balance for a step forward, she countered with a step backwards.
Ok. Fine. I stood in the wash stall, and she stood outside of the wash stall. I was thinking about how to coax her to come with me and turn around -- not even get wet! just stand! -- and held my hand out to her. She looked interested, but made no move. I asked her to: "Cmon, Mo, you've gotta get in here."
She looked at me, looked at my hand, and took a step into the wash stall, no pulling, no walking, no bullying. A little surprised, I took a step back. She followed. From there out it was smooth sailing: we walked in, turned around, and stood for about thirty seconds before I gave her lots of praised and a cookie and pulled off her tack.
Mo has good muscling, but a little too much under her neck for my liking. She's a bit butt-high at the moment, probably 15.3 at the withers and 16.0 at the hip, and has a big ol' head to grow into. She's beautiful, though, and very sweet. She loves to drag her nose in the dirt to make snot-mud and then share it with me.
Hunter? Jumper? Who knows? She's got the movement for a hunter, but I'd love a jumper. We'll see what direction she wants to take.
She'll get tomorrow off, and Tuesday there'll be another update. Maybe with pictures! I know my dad took some.
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