I watched the March DVD yesterday. I didn't feel that my fear of riding was as bad as Elizabeth's so did not feel the need to do what she did for myself but I noticed they said it was a good thing for your horse as well so I decided to do it with Garbo (and then maraschino) today. Garbo doesn't like me mounting bareback - maybe I am crap at it - but he either steps forward or sideways away from me just as I go to get on. I have to stand on a chair or tyre to get on.
First I gave him a good groom, in readiness for tomorrow. I also took him for a graze by the hay shed since there is not much grass in the track at the moment.
Rubbing him while I was standing on the chair was fine but as soon as I rubbed him with my leg he stepped away. This gave me the opportunity to work on getting him to move towards me sideways with the carrot stick on the far side while I stayed standing on the chair. We had to do it a few times before Garbo decided to do what I was asking and to stay there while I lifted my leg.
Then I leaned over him and rubbed him - again he stepped away twice so we started over, and worked on moving towards me again.
After an hour he was standing still while I was leaning over him, and getting on and off. This photo doesn't show me very far over his back because I had to use the camera timer and only had 10 seconds to get on, and Garbo was wondering why I was suddenly was running over and up and on!! (hence the ears back in the photo).
I noticed he finally relaxed and didn't lift his leg, swish his tail, or step away by the end of it,\. We ended the session there. He yawned quite a bit after that.
Then I decided to try it with Maraschino since Linda said on the DVD that this technique is what they use for starting young horses. I groomed him first - I have some before and after photos below! I had to put conditioner on the end of his mane as it's really dry and split. I managed to lean lightly over his back within only a few minutes and he was very calm. I was quite impressed. He wasn't worried about me standing higher up either.
Posts
2 comments:
LOL I know what you mean about the camera timer! I was given a Flip video camera as a gift and I've started attaching it to the fence (with a gorillapod tripod) and setting up some cones or other markers to tell myself where the frame is. Then I'll make sure to do something with in that area in hopes of getting something in the video that I can freeze as a snapshot.... horsetech!
Sounds intriguing - what's a gorilla tripod?
Post a Comment