Saturday, 12 October 2013

Yesterday's news


This is a fascinating journey with Ace. Today it was very cold, very blowy and threatening to rain.  These seem to be conditions which he associates with pain, and he was swishing his tail as I tacked him up.

 I decided to ignore him, lunged, and went to get on. He stamped his feet and even kicked forwards with one back leg. I told him off, and then he stood still and let me get on easily.  I had the mounting block 40 metres from the gate and he walked over loosely and stopped when I asked him to.  I did a 'rinse and repeat' and I was very happy with how loose his walk is.  

His behaviour correlates with the weather, which is completely understandable. For the moment, my task is to reprogram those expectations of pain, and not put him in any challenging situations until he is more confident.

We are away now for a short holiday and the house sitter will be feeding them but nothing else. I'm extremely happy that we are in the best possible shape to start hacking next week. From today's progress, I also expect to be able to start riding circuits of the arena, but I won't be making a point of it for a while yet.

Radar and I had a good hack yesterday and if the weather is kind we plan to hunt Wednesday.  That's a big 'if'  from now on, well have to take it as it comes.

C
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4 comments:

  1. Jean12 October 2013 at 15:04

    It does certainly sound as if Ace is anticipating pain, especially in the cold. Working him now in it is a really good idea. The sooner you can conquer that anticipation the better.

    Already, now, he's had several good experiences, so your going on a holiday will give him a few days to take it all in. If you can give him a few more before you go, away, it will be even better. Sometimes a horse's patterning process takes a day or two after a lesson. It will be interesting to see how he reacts when you are back and start to work him a bit again.

    Hope you get to hunt. You need to get some thrills on your frolicking boy. *G*

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  2. cptrayes13 October 2013 at 10:45

    From the weather report yesterday, we didn't miss a hunt due to being away. It was raining so much I wouldn't have gone anyway. We went to see a castle instead - it even had an indoor school, though I sou t the waxed fibre surface was original :-)

    C

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  3. cptrayes14 October 2013 at 10:32

    it was. What amazing place.

    C

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