Even though I haven't been posting with my usual regularity, we have been working. Jessie and I have been doing more groundwork and working at liberty. The initial reason for moving to groundwork was essentially a time factor. The days are getting shorter and it was a way to get our work in "quicker", if you will. The surprise is, that even though we do many of the same exercises, I think this has improved my timing and feel. Because I'm working on refinement instead of the basic concept, groundwork offers me more time to think about what I''m asking for, giving the consistent cue, and sharpening my release time. Just spending time with Jessie is helping me to learn better horsemanship...imagine that!
We did get to ride on Sunday. We rode out to the City Farm with it's big wide roads in between alfalfa crops. We did a lot of trotting (with posting to stay in shape). On the way home we found a place to work on our "whoa". Jessie stops in one direction just great. The other direction, if you watched the horse h-o-r-s-e game video, not so much. We had to work on it for about 15 minutes before I got two consistent stops in the bad direction.
Ranae rode without her spurs and she got to work with Dusty on trying to work off leg pressure with the 10 thorn berry-bush as backup. At first Dusty noticed the lack of reinforcement, but by the end of the ride he had improved.
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