Wow, I can see I have a ways to go on this blogging habit. Every two years isn't very good. Well, since then I've gone through ups and downs on training. Right now I'm in a down. My down started after I got bucked off and stepped on by Phoenix - nasty bruise on my thigh :-o here, I'll post a photo, I mean it is Halloween today and you might want a scare. Yeah, so it was hard to walk even but I've pretty much completely recovered and now I've been lacking motivation.

Okay, so it was taking a longggg time to download the photo of my nasty bruised thigh. Trust me - it was ugly.

Early lessons

The last couple of days I've only worked Phoenix. I start by refreshing what he knows:
He is desensitized to the lead rope and desensitized to the stick and string part one. The stick and string part 2 looked okay but he'd move at around 30 spanks. But we do have bugs and so today I sprayed him and we got through 40 on the left and 38ish on the right. I also started to twirl the string more and he looked at it quite a bit but then relaxed. The bugs were still out though.

Also the last two days I've worked on yielding the hindquarters part one and backing up 1. Today his yield was some better but then he started to move in a circle around me. Clinton addresses this in his DVD but I couldn't remember and so I'll need to watch it again. His backing up was much better today and we worked some on backing up parts 2 & 3 and he was great.

We had a storm yesterday evening and this morning I went down to do chores and noticed a large branch had fallen on once side of my wood arena fence and busted it up. The branch is 1/3 into the arena :(

Okay so I plan on sticking with the same lessons as today for another day or two. Hope to move desensitizing with stick and string part 2 into the refreshing part and add another skill to work on.

Small Steps

I am going to recap what I've done now so that I can be up to date. I've watched the first DVD which is pretty much on Philosophy and then the Round Penning DVD, okay, most of it. I needed to get my butt out there and work with these critters some. I found that the erena is a real pain to try and do round pen work in.

I have been using my 25 yr old mare the practice on before working on my 9 yr old gelding. The problem is that she is so stuck in her ways and can't understand what I'm looking for. I mean she's turned to the outside for 25 yrs - why turn to the inside? So it's taking a LOT of work. I ended up using the lunge line so that I can get her to turn IN.

Then I watched the desensitising with the rope and stick/string DVD. My mare is rather freaked by the rope and my arm felt like it was going to break off - and then she finally settled down about it. THANK GOD! Oh, and the stick and string - it goes back to the 25 yr old thing... when she sees a lunge whip looking thing she thinks I want her to move in a circle. It's what we've ALWAYS done. So, she's on the rope and I'm walking away from her with the stick out front rhythmically going plop, plop, plop, plop - and she's running 360's around me. I did this for a while and finally at one end I stopped at the end and let her do 180s for a while. Finally she relaxed.

My gelding, Phoenix, is just great. When I bought him his purchase price also included 3 mths of training and the man had a round pen and I know he taught him all of this stuff. When I go to do something with him he's like, "Oh, yeah, that's the way it SHOULD be done." So he's a piece of cake.

I'm thinking of just focusing on Phoenix now. I'm afraid that I'll spread my time out too thin and not get all of the training in on my gelding that I want to get done. I hope to continue to practice what I've taught my mare. We've worked hard on what we have learned - I'd hate to lose it all.

It's here!!

Friday finally came and I was scheduled to help at my daughter's field trip but when I got home - there it was :)

It's one of life's little joys - getting stuff in the mail!

So unpacked everything, and it was all there and looked better than I had hoped for.

Small world/ mysterious ways

So between Tuesday and Friday I did lots of looking up stuff on the No Worries web site. The fall of '09 Journal had an article on being afraid of cantering that I needed to read. I don't like cantering in an arena. Not sure why that is but the article did help me figure some of that out. And I also am now able to watch the shows that Clinton has put on RFD-TV!

It's been a good way to find people in my area that are working on this same kind of training. And get this, one of the No Worries club members was one of the gals that I took pictures for at the de-spooking clinic! AND, she knows my sister and brother-in-law. So we plan on getting together soon.

Research

I tried using the point and cluck method to get phoenix into the trailer and it was a no-go. And that got it into his head that he didn't have to go into the trailer at all so I needed to get someone to help me. It didn't take much but was a bummer. Had an uneventful trip home and unloaded and washed out the trailer and called it a day.

Then started my search for the Natural Horsemanship way. I really just needed a halter and rope to get started but I wanted to learn more. Who were these people and how did others know about them.

I found others mention Clinton Anderson and how much more simple he makes his teaching. I liked that. My brain needs simple. Repeatedly I heard of RFD-TV and realized that not having cable TV did have it's drawbacks, although not many. But that's where people get to see a patchwork of trainers. On YouTube I watched some trainers including Clinton. Also found a guy named John Harrer that keeps a video log of his horse Jessie and their progress using Clinton Anderson's training methods.

Time was a wasting and I wanted to get to practicing the stuff I had learned. I ended up getting the Clinton Anderson Fundamentals DVD set, the halter and rope and stick and string. Oh, and it was less expensive if I joined the "No Worries" Club that gave me discounts and access to lots of educational information on the Internet. Glad to be moving fwd on this. It was Tuesday and I was going to get my stuff on Friday before Memorial Day weekend!

Clinic

And so Phoenix did really fine at the clinic and he faced some of the objects much better than I had thought he would. We didn't have time to address every object that they had but the water, plastic jugs, blow up penguin, wooden bridge, the culvert, and a couple of others.

I put him in his stall for a while and watched the next clinic. They were just getting started and after a bit I decided to go and saddle Phoenix up and I practiced what I had just learned out in their jumping arena.Things went good enough that I got on and went around at a walk and a bit of trot and called it quits.

By the time I got back to the clinic I saw that there was one rider that had a camera around her neck and she was trying to take pictures while she was having her horse work the obstacles. Or maybe just of obstacles themselves. So I went out and offered to take pictures of her and her horse. They were doing a good job and I hope I got a couple of shots. Then there was another person with a camera that wanted a couple of pictures.

This clinic got done with and the next one started and I met one person I knew from AND Stables. Her name is Judy and her and a friend came in support of one of her friends that was riding in the last clinic. While I was sitting with them her friend started talking about Parelli and that she liked Clinton Anderson's way of making things more clear but they were similar in content. I jotted that name down, "Clinton Anderson".