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Moving on from the halter
Moving on from the halter
In the short arena sessions with her halter and one then two reins, Sky has established a lovely 'soft feel' or lightness to the rein asking her to flex laterally, and she is responsive to leg cues to disengage her hind. We have a nice one-rein stop. However, she has been lacking confidence and motivation to move forwards and straight in her first dozen rides. Hopping on in more natural environments where straight is a more clear answer has seemed to help a little, so tapping into this for a 5 minute part of an in hand walk has been woven into the ridden work. We've even done our first few steps of trot following a friend's horse on the wooded tracks. It's lovely to be out with her, and she seems to enjoy the adventures. After several weeks of this, we even tried our first solo outing, in hand on the way out, and ridden most of the way back. She did great, and even crossed the river both ways. This adventure marked 12 months from 'gotcha day' so was a special one. I've been thinking hard about trying to ask her 'yes' questions, is to ask her to do things she can do. So we've also recently tried forwards in the arena with another horse working with us in formation style riding. taking it in turns to lead, follow, move in parallel and circle at different diameters. Sky's forwards is coming along slowly but surely as a result. We even had our first arena trot using this approach.
I'm progressing her education in a bosal hackamore (see bitting and bridling tab for more on this), an easier translation from the halter with two reins. We're building on the understandings established both on the ground (over the past 9 months) and with the ridden halter work (from the last 2 months) to combine forwards steps, lateral bends to a one rein stop, hind yields, back ups on two reins and yielding the shoulders with a reaching step. The latter movement is the foundation for work such as pirouette in dressage, or roll back in Western traditions, and helps to teach the horse to shift its weight back with lightness. My job is to help her translate these movements while she's also balancing the additional weight of a rider, while also keeping her mindset positive, and our partnership sweet and connected.
As she is still a developing young horse, the sessions continue to be short and focused (about 10-20 minutes of ridden work after 5-10 minutes of groundwork) and she is rewarded for every single positive attempt or 'try' she offers by having a full release of any pressure at all. I ride her at most 2 times a week. We continue to mix the ridden work sessions in with walks out in hand, trailer training, liberty work, obstacles, and other confidence building activities on the ground, so she is usually having 3-4 sessions of work/adventure/connection per week.
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