Monday, October 5, 2015

Round pen video

I wanted to post this with the write up of lesson 2, but it was taking forever to upload. In my hurry, I didn't get subtitles put on, which kind of sucks.

Jessica coached me through my mistakes and helped me be lighter with Skeeter. I never considered myself particularly heavy-handed or overly dramatic, and watching the video I still don't think I'm over-the-top with my signals, but she's got Skeeter so tuned into body language that I literally only need to raise the flag (or even, I swear, think about raising the flag) for direction.

I did get after her pretty hard in the first part of the video for stopping and turning, but even that was just a sharp flap of the flag. By the end of the video, all I was doing was raising or lowering the flag just a few inches.




I'm glad that Skeeter going to training includes Jessica tuning me up, because I don't want to be heavy-handed with Skeeter and if I thought I was not too sharp and Jessica thought I was, then I definitely need the tune up. (If that makes any sense at all.)

5 comments:

Allenspark Lodge said...

Cool, cool, cool.

Bill

Dreaming said...

I loved watching her move and it was wonderful to hear Jessica's coaching. What fun!!

Linda said...

Nice! Love the video. My trainer has been emphasizing more softness on my cues, too. And, I also thought I was pretty soft to begin with. Looking good though!

GunDiva said...

Thanks Dreaming. I am enjoying Jessica's coaching as well, she's very good at it. I still continue to believe that she's got the magic touch with horses, even though she's sharing a bit of her wisdom with me.

Linda, I'm blaming it all on livery horses. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. No, really, though, I'm loving this softness that I'm learning. It's amazing to just cluck her up to a trot or kiss her to a canter and then back up and have her turn and face up. I never thought that would be possible.

Shirley said...

Sure is a nice sensitive horse! You have a good coach there too.