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.