KBR Training Case Study:"Patience"
| |
|
On Sunday, April 25th Cindy came by to work Patience. It was an overcast
but calm day. Patience spent about 45 minutes getting her first experience
with the horse clippers. We didn't have much trouble with her bridle path,
but she did want to pull away when we approached her muzzle.
After trying a few times to finesse our way in, we went back to basics. We played "Touch it!" with the clippers and in no time at all got her nose and muzzle. Her chin was a little trickier but we kept going from "safe" areas back to her chin and we got her trimmed up fairly nicely. Next we saddled up and went into the round pen. I tried her in a snaffle bit and headstall for the first time. We had a difficult time sizing the headstall and ended up taking a Fredrickson side pull halter, adjusting it to where the side rings were next to the snaffle rings, and we hung the snaffle from the halter by passing the rein clips around both the halter and snaffle rings at the same time. This setup worked better than the headstall as the halter provided more support for the snaffle and it no longer tended to slip into her mouth when she resisted a bend. This was Patience's third serious saddling and while we had done bending and backing in the earlier sessions, we hadn't gone forward. We snapped on a lead line and Sharon asked with the line for Patience to move forward as I aided with my legs. Before long we were applying less and less of the lead rope and Patience was working primarily off my leg and rein aids. We disconnected the lead line and Patience moved nicely with Sharon walking nearby. She didn't quite have the confidence to move out on her own. Cindy was game to get on for a ride. We put her up and she practiced bending. Then we walked out on the line. Patience was doing extremely well so I disconnected the line. Sharon had the camera and was recording the event and it was at this point we made a mistake. My walking alongside was fouling up the photo shots so I sped up a little just to get out of the camera frame. Patience keyed on this and sped up also. Cindy wasn't sure she should pull back on the reins and things got kind of hairy and Cindy bailed. (She made a good horizontal landing; no lawn darting!) Patience settled right back down, we saw that Cindy was OK and I climbed on myself and Patience worked fine. We set up a few situations with Sharon in the ring and if Patience got keyed up at all with Sharon's pace or position, she'd come right back down with rein contact. The earlier incident clearly wasn't Patience's fault so Cindy got back up and rode some more. For a reward we turned Patience out in the arena for a couple of lazy hours of reciprocal grooming with Prints. More follows... |
Cindy on top!
|
Continue to Part 11Return to Part 9Return to BeginningPress "Back" to return to the page that brought you hereReturn to Case Study SectionReturn to Training SectionReturn to Wild Horse MentorsReturn to KBR World of Wild Horses and BurrosGo To
| |
