May 2, 2008

Training the Phebes

Phebes has had four trail rides now. She went for an hour her last ride on Wednesday evening. On the days I don't have time to ride, we work reinforcing ground manners, turns on the forehand, turns on the haunches, lateral and vertical flexion, and a WHOLE LOT OF LOVEY SCHMOOOOOOZING! Not sure how much Phebes is bonding to me, but I'm darn sure bonding with her.

A report of our last trail ride, the good, the bad, and the ugly:

Concrete bridge crossing: A+
Flat trail work: A
Downhill: A+ (careful, straight, and responsive)
Scarey Object: B (some initial spooking, but approached, and got over it)
Uphill: C- (she went up the hill but WOOOOOOOWEEEEEEE too fast!)
Following another horse: A- ( she crowded the horse in front on a downhill)
Leading : A (she seemed confident, and moved in front without worrying about the horse behind her).
Being left alone, other horse leaving and disappearing: D (let's say that was rather exciting.....)

GRADE AVERAGE: 2.9 = C+ So a high average overall for the Phebes. With only four short trail rides last about an hour each, she's doing pretty well. There are definitely many issues to work on, but she's a young, green, high strung horse, so I feel she's doing okay. She is performing much better than her mommy did when I tried to start her on trails.
Ditch Crossing: D (she will go but with a flying leap)
Tight Claustrophobic situations: C- (again, she wants to rush through tricky spots in the trail, not good!).

Work to do here includes:

Breaking out the shovel to dig a ditch in the front paddock that I can pour buckets of water in, and make a shallow, muddy, ditch crossing to work from the ground.

Continued work in the seven safety steps in Frank Bell's video. I've discovered that Phebes is really bothered by things around, and over head. She's making progress, but still needs some de-spooking in this area.

Trailer Loading........will I ever conquer that monster? We did work on that this week for an hour or so, and she was getting 3/4 of herself in, relaxed, and chewing....but can't get the whole horse in yet (that isn't handy, huh?).

Riding with a strange horse.

About a bizzillion de-spooking things as they present themselves.

Life is good. ~Endurance Granny

No comments:

Post a Comment