I was cleaning out my closet the other day and I ran across some K-9 Rally Obedience cards I had made up to practice with my Australian Shepard Max. I thought this might be a fun thing to do with our horses, so on Sunday we took them with us on our ride.
We found a nice little field with decent footing and laid the cards on the ground. They had things like "Slow", "Fast", "Normal", "Right Turn", "About Turn", and "Halt" printed on both sides. We set them on the ground to for a course. If you don't know Dog Rally Obedience, it is a competition where you follow the directions on the signs to navigate a course. "Normal" was our trot, "Slow" was a walk, "Fast" was a lope, "About Turn" was a rollback, and the others were self explanatory.
It was hot and we laid the cards out quickly to have a simple run through to see the difficulty level of negotiating the course. We took video of each horse's first run, which weren't very good. The second run was better, but there were a lot of things to improve. Jessie's rollbacks are sloppy and slow. She resists on the backup just prior to the rollback and I may have to start there. My cues looked awkward and I was a little forward which would make it harder to work on her back end.
We had fun, though. The next version may not look like this one. I've got a couple of ideas on how to try and make the game both more fun and challenging.
We had had a good ride out to this field and had done some exercises in another field. The loop back home was a nice little ride. We even had a slight breeze.
3 comments:
Dusty seems to get more and more relaxed each time I see him. Little Jessie looked like she had a bit of a Lucy-tude there a few times. Looks fun and I'm so glad you share this stuff with us!
Yeah, I think Dusty almost fell asleep during his run ;>)
I've been asking more from Jess and she's resisting especially in the rollbacks. I think we may have to have a lonnng talk about this soon. She is stopping and collecting better.
And, thanks, we're trying to make the videos shorter and easier to watch. I see some of our manuevers and cringe, but what the hell, that's how we learn. We're glad you enjoy them.
Yeah I noticed her stop was better.
I do like the shorter videos. ;)
You want to cringe? I'll make a video and you can cringe. Hey CA says do what you've got to do to get the job done but no where does he say you have to do it perfect or pretty. ;)
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