Day two of "Bonnie Back To Work". I decided to do some at liberty work first. She ran crazy until she broke a sweat and I was pretty busy keeping her from turning her butt to me. She even took the jump by herself at full gallop. I am at awe the power of this little mare.
She finally settled down a bit and I took some video with my phone. I need practice, and ignore the inane whistling. It's her queue to look at me for direction. I had to be pretty persistent with it. You can see girth rubs from our trail ride. This is why I'm lunging and not riding.
After this I clipped the lunge on and we had us a good work session with no stupidity.
I rode Rosie too. I set up a square using cones and spread out my ground rails so that I could do figure work over and around them. My focus was keeping her soft, focusing on pushing her out with my inside leg. My goal is to reduce the obvious hand motion to bend her. She gave me really good tries with several successes. More success then not. Then for cool down I worked on keeping her soft into contact at the walk and halt. She tends to push her nose out at halt instead of holding herself. I was consistently getting halts with her in perfect frame, and be able to throw my reins away and she holds it!
And I noticed something new today on Rosie!
It's not in this picture from September 26, 2011...
Do you see it?
No no.. it's not more hair! It's a TOP LINE !!
If you look past my failure to brush her after the ride, you can see it now?!?
She is looking great! Both are! Bonnie iss a lovely mare as well , and a nice mover
ReplyDeleteRosie and Bonnie are both looking great! I love your new header picture, so sweet.
ReplyDeleteNice little video. She is a pretty mare.
ReplyDeleteDan
Ps: To your question about sand colic, we don't worry about it too much. There are plenty of horses in our area and, in the seven plus years we've lived here, we have not heard about one case of sand colic. However, to be prudent, most of their hay is fed either in their stall or in an off-the-ground feeder. We also give them psyllium, which they love, once a month. We also do a fecal check twice a year as part of our semi-annual vet visits. That's also a check for worms as we use diatamaceous earth instead of chemical dewormers. So, far we have had no problems in either area. Dan