December 27, 2009

Today, Sarah was in a mellow mood..."In A Mellow Tone"...she had played hard during turnout this morning, and was in quite a happy state.  For today's plan, I set out four cones to work on a horsemanship pattern.  I also set up a walk-over with three poles.  The last time I had her do walk-overs, they were elevated. She had a little bit of a problem with the elevated walk-over, which seems funny, because elevated trot-overs have been no problem.  But, the walk-over poles, being 12 inches closer together, were daunting.  So, today, I set them up flat on the ground.  Not only this, but instead of putting them 24 inches on center, I placed them with a full 24 inches in between each pole.  This simplified the obstacle for her.  She did well with this.  The last two times over the poles in either direction, she placed her feet perfectly, not hitting or clipping any of the poles.   Next time with this obstacle, I will go back to 24 inches apart on center.
The horsemanship pattern consisted of four cones, one cone placed on each end of a large rectangle.   The pattern was:  Starting on the inside of cone 1, lope on the left lead up the long side of the rectangle to cone 2, perform a turn on the hindquarters 220 degrees to the right, strike off immediately into a right lead lope across the center to the inside of cone 3, then perform a turn on the hindquarters 220 degrees to the left, jog to the midway point between cones 3 and 4, then break into a working trot, travel around cone 4 to the left at the trot, continue back toward cone 3, stop halfway between cone 4 and 3 and back 5 steps. End of pattern.  After warming up a bit, I put Sarah through this pattern.  She did well with it.  Today, her down-transitions were especially clean.  When I rode her last Wednesday, her  down-transitions were a bit sloppy, so we did some work to clean those up.  Today, she remembered the work, plus, her mellow mood was working in my favor (any excuse to stop, please!).
One funny thing happened during the warmup which showed just how quiet of a mare she is.  When I was taking her around a corner on a right lead lope, I gave her a bump with my right rein to frame her better as she was traveling a little "nose to the outside".  The rein happened to drop right out of my hand, and I caught it with my foot.  When she noticed the change in my body position, she stopped and waited.  I consider this a very desirable quality in a horse!  I just picked up the rein and continued on.  What a good girl!

After her workout was finished, I gave her her weekly hoof treatment, and then she had another "giant carrot" that she had received for Christmas.  This mare was one happy girl!


Have a great day,
Kirsten