A week of training begins...

Being a full time mom and self employed, my time is limited, but I'm determined to train Bundi at least 3 days/week.  Essentially, the training schedule is:

Day 1 - Round pen work to release built up energy, review lunging skills, build respect, trust and confidence.  After round penning, she stands tied for about 30-45 minutes while I do barn chores.  This teaches her to stand quietly and patiently (something we're still working on since she does a lot of pawing at the ground).


Day 2 - Riding in the arena.   I always lunge first to do a quick attitude check and get out any bucks then hop on and immediately go to lateral flexion exercises so she doesn't learn to walk away when I get on.  When we start moving, we're currently working on emergency one-rein stops, flexing with the bridle and the cruising exercises at the walk, trot and canter.  At the end of the session, she again stands tied to think about things and learn patience.


Day 3 - Trail day.  It's important to take your horse off the ranch and expose them to new things, but doing this by yourself isn't always the safest thing.  Right now, I'm leading her out on the trail and while we are out there, I still make her work.  By moving her feet, I'm asserting my dominance over her and teaching her to respect me out on the trail, too.  Eventually, we'll get to riding more out on the trail, but for now - safety first.  At the end of the trail ride/walk, we always go to the arena and do another 10-15 minutes of lunging or riding.  This helps keep a horse from getting barn sour.  They quickly learn there's no rush to get home when getting home means still more work in the arena.  After all of this, guess what?  She stands tied for 30-45 minutes!

So today was a round pen day.  She lunges at liberty, but when she turns, she must turn towards me, not away.  Showing me her butt and heels is a sign of disrespect.  Right now she has no problem turning towards me as she moves to the right, but for some reason, the other way is more difficult for her - something we're working on.  A lot of what I do in the round pen is ground work exercises and desensitizing work to teach her to not be afraid of the tools I'm working with and to use the thinking side of her brain.

Below is a video with an example of how I'm desensitizing Bundi.  I'm whipping the ground and the air around her with a whip, but she has been trained to stand quiet, calm and still despite all the noise and movement - that's exactly what I want her to do.  It also helps to instill trust in me that despite all that is going on around her, she must use the thinking side of her brain (as opposed to the reactive side which says "run away") and realize that I've asked her to stand still and she is OK and not being hurt by obeying me.

And one last video - I'm using the same whip to "flog her with kindness" as my trainer calls it.  This gets her used to the whip touching her and she learns that the correct response is to just stand quietly.  This is a great exercise for real flighty horses and head shy horses to build trust in the handler and learn to relax with their head.  You'll see that I can "flog" her with the whip all over her body and she doesn't mind at all, even when I accidentally lay the whip across her eye and pop her in the nose!   Good horse!