Over the summer at any give time I will have three or four training horses to ride, plus my own three horses, almost everyday. Ches and I are going to try and get out of bed in the mornings;to get stuff done. But those who know us know that getting up before 9:30 is a stretch and getting out of the house before 11:30 is an even bigger one. Today we got up bright and early and were out of the house by 9:00 (I was proud). Ches wanted to ride Stuey out in the field and I had plans for Gunnar later that afternoon, so I grabbed Perry to go out with Stuey. They had their first brother/sister ride. Perry is sure that she can’t leave the barn once we get in the hayfield and has a sticky place, but every time she stops she gets a sharp tap with my whip and off we go (maybe someday she’ll give it up). Both horses have only been out with other trained horses who are fairly brave. The little chickens were sure the fenceline by the creek was going to eat them as well as the herd of four horses in our backfield. But after I assured Perry that there were no horse eating dragons anywhere we worked on our forequarters and mini leg yields.

All this time Stuey was trotting around the perimeter of the field, so he would go away from her and then come back. This is a good thing for all horses to practice. They learn to trust you when you tell them they aren’t going to be alone forever. We worked on some trot to halt and canter to halt transitions. She was pretty silly about cantering when her bro was far way (crow hopping and just being bouncy in general). I told her life is unfair, and we continued to worked on all this until she could do it like her normal lady-like self.  After that we went to play on our hill in another field. Well... Perry wants to see the whole world and she wants to see it NOW. The new sights and her bro had her all fired up, meaning she was jigging, wouldn’t walk at all, and wouldn’t stand  (when she wants to go she rears about 2 feet off the ground, even if I have a loose rein). The rearing thing just gets her little bottom in trouble, meaning she gets bent around and has to move her hindquarters, fast.

Stuey got to go off and play by himself and Perry got to go up and down the hill so many times I lost count. Then Ches comes back on Stuey and tell’s me she’s getting off, and Perry and I are still trying to walk up and down the hill (it was like the energizer bunny). I moved to a little steeper hill in hopes of getting her tired faster and after about four times up and down the steep hill she started walking. However, she still couldn’t stand still. So we had to go back and go up and down the hill some more. When we got done she could walk anywhere and stand anywhere. Working hard was her choice, and I offered her lots of chances to stop and stand. She wasn’t making mindless decisions, she was thinking through it the whole time. Sometime this week we are going to go back out on the hill and see if she remembers that the release was through walking and standing. I’m sure she felt the burn of un-used muscles later, though it really didn’t look like it when she was running around the field!

Wednesday, June 21 (Kelsy) Day 17

Another one of those early morning rides. Perry got the full get up on which included a breast collar for my saddle and splint boots all the way around. We went off to play on the hill again. She was much better this time—the hard work must have left some kind of impression on her. She still was a bit fired up about being out by herself so we started by walking all over the hill up and down every trail we have. Then came the hard part… standing still. I asked her to stand and if she felt like she needed to move I would bend her and have her move her hindquarters around until she stopped moving. We would then start the standing game all over again. Perry and I must have done this at least 20 times, and then of course I got bored with standing so we came back down and rode in our Haflingers’ dirt lot. Perry is going to a camp this weekend where we work cows, so she got to practice her “cow turns.” I had her trot and then I would open a rein and she would have to get herself stopped and bring her forequarters around. Nothing fast or fancy, just a simple doing what I asked exercise. She did get really good though and would do it from the canter to. Anyone who has ridden a green broke horse knows they have baby steering, but little things like having them follow the rein around and do forequarters helps get rid of “baby steering” sooner.  

Thursday, June 22 (Kelsy) Day 18

Saturday, June 24, (Kelsy) Day 20

This weekend we had planned a group ride with some ladies my Mom gives riding lessons to. It's called “Cheap Cowgirl Camp” and everyone gets together, brings food, and spends the weekend on one of the lady's 40 acres. She has large fields and a small herd of cows, and all the horses go out together in a 20 acre hayfield for the weekend to enjoy themselves. I took Gunnar along as my main mount for the weekend, but Perry got to come also to hang out, see new things, and meet the cows.

I’ve said this before, but Perry doesn’t walk to many places, she trots. Mom’s horse Chucky took it upon himself to guard Perry from all the other horses in the herd (even though he hates her at home). So being the social butterfly she is, Perry spent all weekend trotting all over that hayfield and poor Chucky would follow along behind giving up his precious eating time.

The morning task was to move all the cows to different fields so we could work them later. The first set of cows included only three. The whole group of 12 horse/riders went out after the cows, and Perry came along running free in and out of the herd of horses (she was very helpful). Of course the cows were hiding at the far end of the field in a nook, so a few people went to get the cows out and everyone else stayed in the big field ready to direct them. Perry stayed in the big field and as soon as the cows came out went trotting down the field after them. She made it about halfway down the field with cows before she realized no one was coming with her, so she came back to the group of horses. For a long time she was with those three cows in their new field and later that afternoon was moved to the larger herd of cows. At one point I looked out in the hayfield where Perry and the big herd of cows were, and Perry was “bowling for cows” as we call it. She was running straight through the cow herd to scatter them every which way.

Perry spent most of her morning hanging out with the cow herd. There was one Haflinger colored cow in the bunch that she tried to make friends with many times, but the cow just didn’t want to play with her!

Later that evening Ches, Jamie (a girl we both grew up riding with) and Linda (one of Mom's students) went for a ride. I got on Perry because she hadn’t been ridden and I wanted to play on the big "Man From Snowy River hill" with her and move the cows around some. Perry and I rode in the field with everyone for a bit, trotting and cantering around (she does better canter transitions than my TB mare who is 13). She’s always practicing the word “ho” and is getting really good about stopping when I use it.

After a warm-up in the field we all went up on the hill to play. This is a large, steep hill, with underbrush and cow-made switchbacks. Because we are a group of girls who enjoy doing fun things we kept cantering up the hill and riding the challenging the trails. The part of the hill Ches and I like riding is almost like a cliff face, and you have the choice of following treacherous switchbacks to the bottom or going straight down (you have to really trust your horse to go straight down, and they need a lot of balance). At the top there is one well-used trail that cuts into the side of the hill. The plan was to go down the easier switchbacks single file.

Ches was leading the way, Perry and I were next, Jamie was behind me, and Linda was at the back. Ches and I stopped on the trail to wait for Linda who was still coming down the hill to us. Jamie was riding a borrowed Arabian gelding who spends most of his time with his ears pinned (but he doesn’t bite). Jamie was looking back at Linda and didn’t see that her horse had walked up on Perry’s hindquarters with his nose at Perry’s right flank. She got scared and in a split moment fired with both back feet at the horse. Unfortunately, the way the horse was positioned had Jamie in the line of fire, and she got nailed with a hoof in her upper leg. In the end Jamie was fine and just has a nice hoof shaped bruise on her leg and a story to tell.

After the kick Perry got in a lot of trouble because that was a really bad choice on her part, even though she was scared. Moments like that you cannot really prepare for in training, it was very much a situational thing. I’ve had horses run into and bump her on purpose before, but whenever we did this it was in the open where she could move away if she wanted and the horses were not pinning their ears. In these circumstances she had no place to go: there was a tree on our right, a cliff on our left, a horse in front of her, and a horse with pinned ears on her tail. That doesn’t mean it gave her the right to kick. She could have dealt with it better but she didn’t and it happened. It was a reminder that horses are horses, and accidents can happen at any time with any horse.

Later Ches rode another gelding close behind Perry and bumped into her bottom. We also let him sniff her tail and touch her flank with his nose. If she thought about lifting a leg or shifting her weight (which she did only a handful of times), I promptly made her move her hindquarters in a circle respectfully. We had yet to see her kick like that, and it's doubtful she will ever do it again in any situation we try to put her in. We don't feel it is a "problem" we can address, so we plan to just keep doing what we are doing. As promised, there are all the "gory details," and we are far from perfect! 

Sunday, June 24 (Kelsy)

 

After the morning's timed trail course and lunch at Cowgirl Camp I hopped on Perry to play on the trail course and get some pictures of her weekend. The reason we have been lacking pictures in recent updates is because my father is on a fishing trip in Alaska and took our only working camera with him. He gets back on Wednesday, so after that we’ll have pictures again. So for Sunday I had our friend Linda take some pictures of Perry with her camera and email them to me.

 

Perry and I just went out and walked around and checked stuff out on the trail course.  Perry walked through the log pile, which she didn’t think she should have to walk through because there was perfectly good ground without logs all around it. So she just picked and wiggled her way through it the first time. The second time I made her trot through it and again she was doing the baby “why do I have to do this, can’t we just walk around it?" 

There was also a little mound on the course that everyone had to back up, but Perry just had to walk up it and stand around so Linda could take her picture. Then we went over and walked through the metal panel gauntlet. At first she thought for sure there were horse eating dragons in it. After looking at it for a minute she walked through when I asked (granted it was more like crawling on her belly). We went through the gauntlet a few more times until she would just march right on through.

 

Then came the killer mailbox (they eat horses you know). She went right up to it and stood like a lady for me to open and close it, but then some sort of major delayed reaction happened and she went flying sideways about 20 feet (little spaz). After that she could barely stand by the mailbox, so Ches on Chucky in a halter came over and helped us out. I would walk her as close to the mailbox as I could and Ches would bring Chucky right next to her on the other side. This helped stop her from running sideways away from the mailbox and see that if she stuck around long enough it wasn’t going to eat her. 

 

Once she got so she would walk and stand next to it without Ches and Chucky helping I got off, A) because she was being good and B) because it was scorching hot and there was no shade for riding.

 

She had a great two days at Cowgirl Camp and was exposed to a lot of new things.

Perry's training week 4 (new website)